The paper is concerned with the improvement of rail vehicle crashworthiness and occupant survivability. The objective of the European Community funded 4th Framework programme SAFETRAIN project, Train Crashworthiness for Europe, was to devise standards for vehicle construction. In due course it was expected that the consequences would be a substantial reduction (up to 50% in crashworthy trains) in the overall rate of fatalities to rail passengers and crew in Europe. The development of vehicle end structures that would provide these conditions was a major effort in the project involving accident studies, computer simulations, prototype vehicle design, development and testing. The assessment of the effects on passengers was conducted solely by computer simulation. Current European rail vehicle seat layouts were surveyed to provide the possible scenarios that would need to be considered in a study of the different influences on passenger safety that each provided. There were two preliminary requirements; first, to determine the majority accident scenarios from the point of view of impact speed, direction of travel and severity of injuries. Second, to determine what passenger injury criteria should be used in assessing the different seating configurations for their ability to provide passengers with an environment that would promote their likelihood of survival in an impact and limit injuries. Considering the results from all the investigations the conclusions are: 1. The seat model developed for the passenger simulations was demonstrated to be valid for the task required; 2. Unidirectional seating was shown to be the safest in terms of low passenger injury indices, as demonstrate by the simulation results, and contained the passenger between the seats; 3. Facing seats promoted higher passenger injury indices and may not contain the passenger between the seats.
Assessments of passenger safety in future rail vehicles
Bewertung der Fahrgastsicherheit in zukünftigen Schienenfahrzeugen
2002
15 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 6 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Assessment of passenger safety in future rail vehicle
IuD Bahn | 2002
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