Passenger Comfort for the Next Generation Train: Subject Trials for Ventilation and Lighting

Excellent passenger comfort should become a competitive advantage for railways again. For a long time railways have lost the alignment to other modes of transport as for example automobiles. In the frame of the Next Generation Train project plenty of passenger comfort aspects, including ride smoothness, vibration, acoustic noise, pressure fluctuation, lighting, and air-conditioning in high-speed trains are addressed. The current paper is the third one in a series [1, 2] giving a comprehensive overview on the passenger comfort activities at the German Aerospace Center since 2007. In this concluding paper the results of laboratory trials on ventilation and lighting with human subjects are presented. In particular, we describe two studies performed for analysing the thermal comfort of displacement ventilation with air outlets installed under the passenger seats and the pilot study of infrared heating via a panel installed in front of the first row. Further, in two tests, the comfort perception of passengers subjected to a new lighting concept with OLEDs was assessed. Due to the OLEDs’ properties, such as diffuse light with no glare and a warm colour appearance of the light source, subjective comfort is achieved even with the lower average illuminance than defined by EN 13272:2012. Finally, an outlook is given