Laurent Hazard

Amélioration du confort dynamique des trains dans l'optique d'une augmentation des vitesses

Improving dynamic train comfort to increase train speed. The permanent focus of railway competitiveness in the field of passenger transport is determined by several factors, one of which is the increase in traffic speed both on conventional and new very high speed lines. Without taking special precautions, such increases in speed could lead to an inevitable downgrading of the dynamic comfort of passengers, i.e. an increase in stresses especially of the transverse type affecting the train passengers. Such stresses are generated either by centrifugal forces when running through curves, or by vibrations transmitted by the bogies to the carbody. Alstom Transport and SNCF have pooled their efforts to prevent this deterioration and are currently undertaking research work along two lines. (1) The train tilting system as tested on a TGV of the Paris-Sud-Est class shows that there is a 15 percent speed increase on a given distance while simultaneously reducing by half the transverse acceleration to which the passengers are subjected to. (2) The so-called active transverse suspension helps to obtain at 350 km · h −1 a passenger comfort level superior to the one recorded on a TGV train running at 300 km · h −1 .