• International Journal of Railway
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.143-148
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• 2008

This paper is the output of a collaborative European project concerning the barrier free accessibility for disabled persons to regional and long distance trains in Europe. Disabled people represent around 13% of the population in Europe. This is approximately 63 million people. The range of disabilities includes people with reduced mobility including wheel chair users, viewing and hearing impaired people and other forms of impairment. Improving accessibility aims at contributing to the provision of public transport services to all citizens in an equitable way. The purpose of the project was to analyse and to evaluate the existing solutions at selected European railways for all required modules at the entrance (doors, information and safety solutions), to derive a design concept, to develop a mock-up in meeting the needs of rail travellers with the above mentioned impairments and to test it with user groups. The project also aims at deriving components for the determination of standards. The EUPAX Design Mock-up test was performed to verify the advantages of the layout of the train segment including the different modules such as access area (including the access door, gaps between platform and train as well as boarding aid devices), entrance vestibule, information systems inside and outside the train, emergency facilities, toilet with all conveniences and the additional test arrangements regarding push buttons, steps and emergency equipment. For this purpose a questionnaire was developed for the assessment of the EUPAX segment and the additional test arrangements. With the help of this questionnaire it was possible to execute a quantitative and qualitative evaluation. During three test phases 67 experts and handicapped persons from 6 countries have evaluated the Industrial Design mock-up based on this questionnaire. The test group covered persons from North (Denmark) to the South (Italy) and from the West (Spain) to the Middle of Europe (Germany). This is especially important for the generalization (harmonisation) of the results for all European countries. According to COST 335 the information for people with reduced mobility should be clear, concise, accurate and timely. So that all information can be received from persons, they must be transferred on at least two of the three possible ways (acoustical, visual, tactile), a so called "2-sense-principle". Based on the results ergonomic specifications/ solutions for the ergonomic design of the access area, the acoustic, visual and tactile information and the emergency devices including the emergency communication system were developed, related to the benefiting passenger groups.

• Journal of The Korean Society For Urban Railway
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.319-326
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• 2018

The safety interval to prevent collision between trains in a train control system is based on the braking distance according to the emergency braking of the train. The evaluation of the braking performance is based on the longitudinal train dynamics or the commissioning test in the test track, but since the conditions such as the weakening of the adhesion coefficient between the wheel and rail can not all be considered, these conventional methods are not sufficient to design of the train control systems. Therefore, in this study, the Monte Carlo Method (MCM) which can consider various environments is used to analyze braking performance and limitations. The braking model is based on the air braking used in the emergency braking and is modeled to take into account the braking pressure, efficiency, friction coefficient, adhesion condition, and vehicle mass distribution. It is confirmed that braking performance can be improved by controlling the quality of braking device. In addition, the change of the braking performance was confirmed according to the vehicle constituting the train. The results of this study are expected to be used as basic information for designing safety clearance for the train control systems and as a basis for improving the braking performance of railway vehicles.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.207-233
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• 2023

Steel-concrete composite box girder bridges are widely used in the construction of highway and railway bridges both domestically and abroad due to their advantages of being light weight and having a large spanning ability and very large torsional rigidity. Composite box girder bridges exhibit the effects of shear lag, restrained torsion, distortion and interface bidirectional slip under various loads during operation. As one of the most commonly used calculation tools in bridge engineering analysis, one-dimensional models offer the advantages of high calculation efficiency and strong stability. Currently, research on the one-dimensional model of composite beams mainly focuses on simulating interface longitudinal slip and the shear lag effect. There are relatively few studies on the one-dimensional model which can consider the effects of restrained torsion, distortion and interface transverse slip. Additionally, there are few studies on vehicle-bridge integrated systems where a one-dimensional model is used as a tool that only considers the calculations of natural frequency, mode and moving load conditions to study the dynamic response of composite beams. Some scholars have established a dynamic analysis model of a coupled composite beam bridge-train system, but where the composite beam is only simulated using a Euler beam or Timoshenko beam. As a result, it is impossible to comprehensively consider multiple complex force effects, such as shear lag, restrained torsion, distortion and interface bidirectional slip of composite beams. In this paper, a 27 DOF vehicle rigid body model is used to simulate train operation. A two-node 26 DOF finite beam element with composed box beams considering the effects of shear lag, restrained torsion, distortion and interface bidirectional slip is proposed. The dynamic analysis model of the coupled composite box girder bridge-train system is constructed based on the wheel-rail contact relationship of vertical close-fitting and lateral linear creeping slip. Furthermore, the accuracy of the dynamic analysis model is verified via the measured dynamic response data of a practical composite box girder bridge. Finally, the dynamic analysis model is applied in order to study the influence of various mechanical effects on the dynamic performance of the vehicle-bridge system.