In Japan, people aged 65 and over now make up over one -fifth of the population and in twenty years will reach one-third. Japan is the most aged society in the world. In such super aged society, mobility is very important infrastructure for everyone's daily life. Barrier-free, or Universal Design, as well as safety and ecology, has to be introduced for transportation design. In this article, image of super-aged society is described, and future vision of accessible transport is discussed.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Traffic demands increased in urban area and intercity after economical growth in BRICS and other countries under development. It raises rapidly road transport which conducts CO2 emissions and inconvenience of space utility planning in these countries. Then Mass Rapid Transit Systems and HSR are required to solve the problems and being planned. Japanese Railway Industry has an opportunity to join these projects. However a lack of internationally recognized standards and certification system makes obstacles for Japanese Railway Industry entering into the international market by using JIS or Japanese standards. It is urgently required to settle standards and certification system which can demonstrate superiorities of Japanese Railway Technologies. RAMS will be available tool to enforce the issue.

View full abstract

Contact-wire and on-board battery hybrid electric railway vehicle can be defined as electric energy source hybrid electric vehicle that can drive by the energy from either contact-wire collection or on-board storage battery or from both of energy, and that can return the regenerative brake energy to either or both of the two sources. Then it can reuse the regenerative electric energy effectively. And contact-wire-less electric drive is also available by the on-board battery stored energy in non-electrified lines. We carried out the development and fabrication of a contact-wire and on-board battery hybrid light rail vehicle, and data acquisition of the running tests on the tram line at Sapporo City Transportation Bureau and on the railway main line at JR Shikoku, such as one charge running distance by catenary free operation, comparison of the consumed energy against the conventional type of inverter vehicles by hybrid running. In this paper, we reports on the running test results of our new contact-wire and battery hybrid LRV.

View full abstract

The Gauge Changing Train system is aimed at through-operation between Shinkansen lines (standard gauge) and conventional lines (narrow gauge). The 1st Gauge Change Train set (GCT) was completed in 1998 to confirm the basic ability of systems. The 2nd GCT was accomplished in 2007 to examine for practical use operation. Both are the experimental 3-motor-car EMU. They are designed to be able to run at a speed of over 270 km/h on Shinkansen line, and 130 km/h on conventional line. We have done a running test on conventional line, and are now taking a high-speed performance test on Shinkansen line.

View full abstract

The operating railway of Hokkaido Railway Company stretches for approximately 2,500km, one third of which (a section of about 800km) is used by a notably small daily mean number of passengers carriedbelow 500. This yearly shrinking railway use causes JR Hokkaido severe loss-making operations, along with route bus companies. Meanwhile, JR Hokkaido has continued various operations such as "Driver-only Operation" to improve the management of local lines, and "Review of Station Operations," including for the assignment and working hours for station employees. However, such corporate efforts fail to revitalize the management, even with cost reduction measure in particular. Amid these circumstances, dual mode vehicle (DMV), a new concept which can achieve the running of a vehicle both on the railway and road, has been developed to improve the management of local lines.

View full abstract

In the design of railway, experimental evaluation with running test on test truck is becoming important because recent railway systems meet global standard. Therefore, many countries abroad have large equipment. In this report, current status regarding to test trucks in the world is surveyed. Furthermore, a concept for next generation test truck is proposed while explaining the test truck facility which combines the ITS and railway systems in the University of Tokyo.

View full abstract

In this study, the moods of drivers were estimated using physiological information; fluctuations in heart rate were measured by an electrocardiogram to measure autonomic nervous activity. We estimated the level of relaxation of drivers during driving by comparing the sympathetic nervous and parasympathetic nervous activities of drivers when they are driving cars with and without an active seat suspension. A frequency analysis of the nervous activities was carried out using a real-time system that analyzes the fluctuations of heart rate. The moods of the drivers were also examined using a questionnaire to evaluate the correlation between the moods of drivers during driving estimated on the basis of electrocardiographic measurements and those estimated on the basis of responses to the questionnaire. Furthermore, their correlation was also examined by conducting a questionnaire survey with a five-point scale with three as a reference value to examine the subjective ride comfort of drivers in cars with and without an active seat suspension.

View full abstract

Car-body tilting vehicles have been employed to speed up on curved sections in the conventional railways. In this study, an analytical model for the beam-type tilt mechanism with the tilt angle of 5 degrees and the air-spring-type tilt mechanism with the tilt angle of 2 degrees are developed on the multi-body software SIMPACK. Using these models, numerical simulations are carried out and TC_T value which is the index of the riding comfort in the transition curve is evaluated from the simulation results. As a result, TC_T values of the air-spring-type are larger than beam-type because of the difference in lateral acceleration from the tilt angles. Then, for the air-spring-type, the TC_T values of height-control-type and pressure-control-type are compared. Their performances are almost same, although there are cases in which TC_T values of pressure-control-type are smaller than height-control-type.

View full abstract

In section with many curves, car-body tilt vehicles are adopted for shortening in affival time and riding comfort improvement. The pendulum method is superior in the curve passage performance, but structure is complicated. A simple system is expected, so we focused on the air spring car-body tilting method. Air spring car-body tilt system which use air-springs as actuators is more simple than pendulum method, but the tilting speed is relatively slow. So, it is necessaiy to confirm that it can be applied in consecutive curve sections such as Chuo- line. In this development, we caivied out a running test vith the air spring car-body tilt control system using by the proportional flow control valve that can control air supply to the air spring consecutively. As a result, we confirmed car-body tilt control performance and the reduction of rolling vibration.

View full abstract

Recently, the demand on an improvement of comfort in the automobiles has increased. When the car is considered as a room, the space planning of the seat arrangement influences the comfort greatly. In this research, the seat arrangement with rotating seat for improvement of passenger comfort is proposed. To rotate seat inside the room of the car can increase communication of passenger. To rotate seat outside the room of the car can produce private space. Therefore the comfort can be improved. In this paper, the sensory evaluation is performed. A biomedical measurement is performed in the car room. Therefore the effectiveness of seat arrangement with rotating seat for improvement of passenger comfort has been confirmed.

View full abstract

The seats for high speed railway vehicle have vibration characteristics which induce high frequency and torsional vibration. That has a possibility to disturb the ride comfort. To analyze the vibrations mechanisms and to obtain useful information for seat design considering ride comfort, the seat model which has nine-degree-of-freedom is suggested. Backrest and seat base of the seat were modeled by the model, which includes out-of-plane and vertical displacement components of backrest, vertical, longitudinal, pitch, roll and yaw motions of seat base. It can describe the vibration characteristics of the seat against the floor acceleration input. By using the model, the relationship between model parameters and vibration characteristics of the seat was investigated.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient interaction model of tire and soft ground for vehicle simulations on off-road terrain. The model presented in this paper describes the deformable behavior of the elastic tire and the behavior with large displacement and destruction of the soft ground. We adopt a distributed lumped mass-spring model as the tire, Discrete Element Method (DEM) model as the upper soft ground and a mass-spring model as the lower soft ground. A tire model with lug considering contact geometry is also developed on the basis of the interaction model. Numerical simulations of the tire behavior on soft ground using these models have been conducted. The results of the numerical simulations show that the proposed models of tire and soft ground are efficient for vehicle simulations on off-road terrain and that the lug of tire is effective in improving tractive performance of tire.

View full abstract

Road roughness is a significant factor to the ride comfort and the maneuverability of an automobile. In this paper, we estimated a road profile from some measurement data during running test with an experimental vehicle. Our estimation method was based on the frequency transfer function between a road displacement and vertical acceleration of a vehicle. We used an electric vehicle developed in our laboratory as the experimental vehicle, and its frequency transfer function was identified by shaking tests. Estimated road profile was compared to a known road profile, and the accuracy of an estimated road profile was evaluated.

View full abstract

The steering reactive torque of an automobile is one of the important information for a driver to estimate the road conditions and vehicle behavior. In developing the automobile, it is required to realize an intuitive evaluation of maneuverability before prototyping. This paper describes enhancement of the reality of the steering torque simulator using friction characteristics of the actual vehicle. The static and running tests were conducted with developed simulator and the actual vehicle in order to evaluate the reality of the steering torque simulator. It was shown that the reality of the steering torque simulator was enhanced by using actual vehicle characteristics.

View full abstract

This paper deals with a method of tire modeling for vehicle dynamics analysis. In recent year, we are used the empirical model in the field of vehicle dynamics to to perform more precise analysis. But it is very difficult to make the acculate tire model because it requires a large number of exprimental data and the huge indoor test facility. In this paper, we develop a new tire model combined the analytical model and the experimental model to reduce the experimental data. The characteristics of lateral force with camber angle calculated by this method is very similar as those of expelimental data.

View full abstract

This paper presents a 6 force component balance to be used in wind tunnel vehicle model tests. Several parallel plate force sensors were built in the balance, and strain gauges were used to measure strain caused by 6 force components of loads. 24 strain gauges were arranged to 6 full bridges. Each bridge outputs voltage in proportion to one of the 6 force components. Output gains were estimated through theoretical and FEM calculations. Calibration result shows that the balance realized high-linearity, small-crosstalk and small-hysteresis performance. Single component load calibration results agree with FEM estimations, and the sensitivity design process of 6 force component balance was established.

View full abstract

When an elevator rope for a high-rise building is forcibly excited by long-period ground motion, rope displacement becomes large even if the ground acceleration is small. In this paper, a simplified calculation method, based on a single degree of freedom (SDOF) system, for estimating rope displacement of moving cage during an earthquake by using the building's acceleration and ground acceleration is presented. Finite difference analyses of rope vibration are also performed to verify the validity of the simplified method. The results of this simplified calculation method agree with those of the conventional finite difference method, within the 20% error margin.

View full abstract