Abstract
The evaluation of passenger comfort and ride quality in railway vehicles is very important in railcar development. There are many studies to reduce vibration and noise inside the railway carbody. In order to reduce the vibration and noise inside the coach, a new structure that consists of an independent interior inside a body structure is proposed. The new structure is modeled as a double shell structure supported at floor plate. In this paper, acoustic analysis using finite element method is carried out. Experiments are also performed to verify the results of the proposed simulation model. The obtained results are compared with the results of another structure where the interior is hung to the walls of the body structure. Finally, acoustic characteristics of the structure are evaluated from the results of the simulation and the experiment. In addition, effects of the thickness of floor structures are investigated by considering the thickness ratio of real carbody coach. The responses of vibration and acoustics are compared again in the simulation. From the results of the structure having thicker floor plate, the vibration and sound pressure level of the structure where the inner shell is hung at side walls is found to be smaller than that of the structure proposed in this thesis.
