Evaluation and improvement of crashworthiness for high-speed train seats

ABSTRACT The seating system of a railway vehicle is a key occupant protection device in the event of a collision. To improve occupant safety during impact, the research on the seat structure optimisation in AV/ST9001 was conducted in this paper. Dummy-seat finite element simulation model was established and analysed by using LS-DYNA software. Head injury criteria (HIC), chest deceleration, neck injury criteria and tibia index were used to evaluate seat performance; Based on these criteria, the risk from secondary impacts was evaluated for original and improvement design. The results indicate that improvement structure can be minimising injury of secondary impacts for the 50th percentile male simulated. The HIC and neck injury criteria were dropped from 2153 and 4.37 to 502 and 1.07, respectively. It is proposed that this method is used by railway vehicle seat designers to assess new prototypes prior to final validation via the sled test.