Evaluation of interior passive safety for rail seats by sled tests

Abstract

In order to enhance the safety of passengers in the event of the railway accident, it is important to identify the risk to the passengers. The seated passengers have a risk of getting injured due to collision with seats in front of them. The severity of injury depends on the structure of the seat types. There are a lot of types of the seats, for example a rotating and reclining seat and a walkover seat. However, the study compared the injury risk between these seats have not been reported. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of seat types to passengers’ injury through a series of physical sled tests. The rotating and reclining seat for normal car and green car in express train, and the walkover seat in suburban train were used for a comparison in this research. The experiment results showed that the measures to the lower seat back are effective for reducing the severity of injury of passengers seated in the rotating and reclining seat, that the measures to the seating face are effective for reducing the severity of injury of passengers seated in the walkover seat, and that the design of the footrest are also important for the measures.

Keywords

• railway
• crashworthiness
• interior passive safety
• passenger
• rotating and reclining seat
• walkover seat