Estimation of the Comfort Indexes of a Rail Vehicle at Design Stage

This work describes a numerical method allowing to estimate the comfort indexes of a rail vehicle at the very beginning design stage. Thanks to a flexible multi-body code developed by Politecnico di Milano a series of simulations relevant to an AnsaldoBreda high speed train vehicle has been performed. The accelerations on the carbody floor were processed in accordance with the EN 12299 normative and the N_MV comfort indexes were calculated. Furthermore a deeper investigation about some aspects that significantly affect the comfort indexes has been carried out.