Sensitivity Analysis of Railway Vehicle Interiors for Passive Safety in Inline Seating Scenarios

摘要

In this work the passive safety of the inline seating configuration of railway vehicle interiors is investigated. First the mixed multibody and nonlinear finite element models of the passenger seats and supporting structures are proposed for the selected layout arrangement. Multibody models of test dummies, appropriate to the identification of the injury mechanisms typically associated to the layout under analysis, are selected and introduced in the inline seating scenario model. The final piece in the definition of the crash scenario model is the selection of the crash pulse that represents the impact of the railway vehicle structure. In the first part of this paper, the validity of the multibody model and the simulation results of the nominal crash scenario are discussed to ensure the representativeness of the analysis procedure and to identify the most relevant injury indexes of the passengers that must be acted upon by modifications on the interior design of the vehicle. In the second part of this paper the potential changes on the seating layout are presented and a virtual testing matrix is implemented to evaluate their consequences over the occupant injuries. The testing matrix forms the basis for the sensitivity analysis of the passenger safety with respect to design changes. The results show that the multibody models of the occupants together with the nonlinear finite element models of the impacting structures of the seats and tables of the layout arrangements considered enable the comprehensive analysis of the vehicle interiors for passive safety. It is observed that the most important life threatening injury potential for the occupants is at the neck level. Although not being life threatening, the femoral injuries are also very relevant in this type of configurations. The sensitivity analysis provides the indications of what configuration changes can be made to mitigate injury.