Research Of Comprehensive Evaluation Model On Riding Comfort Of High-Speed Train

With the development of technology, high-speed trains, due to their advantages of safety, high speed, punctuality, energy conservation and environmental protection, have become the ideal means of transport that people travel for long distances. In the late 20th century, the world-class high-speed trains, represented by Japanese Shinkansen, French TGV and German ICE, have made tremendous economic and social value, setting a good image of technology and culture to their own country. Their successful development experiences indicate that speeding up is the technical prerequisite, safe operation is the priority, but better design for facilities is crucial to win the market. Besides speed increase and safety guarantee, China's railway is now appealing to more and more passengers by further improvement on the car riding environment and comfort through equipping the cars with the excellent supporting facilities and people-oriented services. Faced with the market competition and in the process of facilities R&D, China' s railway has timely established a full set of standardized serialized design system to provide a reliable experience and foundation for train services upgrading, aiming at a virtuous cycle of R&D internationalization and manufacturing localization.As human scientific and technological level and standard of living improved, traveler's requirements on the ride comfort towards transportation vehicles are increased accordingly. The ride comfort gradually becomes an important factor to influence the design of high-speed railway passenger cars and guarantee the passenger transport market. In recent years, the ride comfort of high-speed railway passenger cars in all countries has been improved rapidly, but the related evaluation is currently still has no uniform model internationally. Although the comfort design criteria in terms of six aspects such as train vibration, acoustic environment, thermal environment, light environment, pressure wave and air quality are established in China at the present stage, the passenger cars in China still can not fully meet all the requirements for ride comfort since other affecting aspects such as space environment, facilities function and service efficiency etc. have not yet been systematically studied. However, the comfort study in China is still focused on the exploration at the level of physical index of car running and neglects the human psychological and behavioral demand, the research on the concept and nature of the comfort is also very scarce. The article takes this as a breakthrough point and studies focus on the following issues:(1) Study object and significance of the comfort; (2)Passenger's psychological processes during evaluation and the general rule; (3) Factors that influence the comfort evaluation; (4) model establishment and test of comfort influencing factors and the weights; and (5) suggestion on improvement on affecting factors the comfort based on the model evolution.In order to solve the above problem, the article summarizes the history, current situation and characteristics of the development of domestic and aboard high-speed railway passenger cars by absorbing the previous study results, and analyses the development trend of railway passenger cars, the background, reason, current status and significance of comfort improving from the ride comfort design point of view. In addition, borrowing the foreign countries'experience on the comfort improving of railway passenger car, on the basis of the research in facilities and compartment environment of high-speed railway passenger cars, the article analyses the ride comfort concept of high-speed railway passenger car and the essence of the research, indicates that the source of comfort evaluation lies in the traveler's subjective feelings, and also proposes a comprehensive comfort definition to meet the passenger's'ride needs, physiological and psychological sensations'. By longitudinal comparison of comfort related theoretical results and the horizontal comparison of the current status of domestic and abroad comfort design and influencing factors, the shortcomings and defects in previous studies are found. The article proposes two new concepts of'meet requirement'and'create space'to analysis and research, and summarizes the methods and current status of comfort study.Based on the full reading, analysis of literature and theoretical deduction, take the main variables of influencing factors as the main line, the article deeply search the relativity between the passenger demand, space design and the ride comfort, and put forward a preliminary idea to make the comfort questionnaire. The questionnaire is designed based on human's psychologically and physiologically subjective feelings as well as the study on the physical condition around the car, developed focus on the ride comfort comprehensive evaluation of high-speed railway passenger cars, and verified and revised both on its reliability and validity through the comprehensive results collected from experts interview,4 times of pre-survey and 6 times of focusing group interviews, and then eventually officially established. The effective questionnaire is spread to 745 passengers on CRH2 EMU running on Beijing-Sifang line. According to the data collected from the questionnaire, the dimension reduction of comfort influencing factors is firstly taken, and then establishes the evaluation model for ride comfort with AHP. Thus, the descending order of weight of comfort influencing factors are:physical stimulation, curve degree of the seat back, dining needs, emotional stimulation, rest requirements, other requirements, cognitive stimulation, behavior stimulation, seat size, auxiliary function, entertainment needs, space requirements. The results are empirically analyzed which shows that the evaluation results derived from the model are consistent with the real situation, and thus prove the authenticity and feasibility of the method. The suggestions for train design improvement are proposed according to the model evaluation results and the passenger's subjective feelings:1. Optimize the seat design; 2. Improve the interior space arrangement; 3. Complete the service facilities around the seat; 4. Enrich the illumination mode. In the research prospects part of the article, the design mode for innovative atmosphere in the compartment and the future research direction are proposed which will provide theoretical references for the train design and improvement.