PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Urban rail is a widely used public transportation; the vibration from frequent rides may impact passengers. The rail vehicle’s vibrations can cause human fatigue and result in severe musculoskeletal problems to the passenger. This paper aims to identify the effects of passenger orientation, operation time and body mass index on passengers’ whole-body vibration on an urban rail in Malaysia. Real-time monitoring of the whole-body vibration was conducted using 23 full factorial designs of the experiment, which was analysed statistically using Minitab Software. The overall result of this study is that the passengers in a seated position had greater exposure to whole-body vibration, which is 0.3686 ms-2 than standing passengers, 0.2965 ms-2. Also, passengers tend to be exposed to greater vibration during an off-peak time of 0.4063 ms-2, than a peak time of 0.3706 ms-2. Lastly, overweight passengers were exposed to greater vibration, of 0.4063 ms-2, than passengers within the ideal weight range of 0.4000 ms-2. This study has statistically proven that all the factors were significantly influenced the vibration exposure to the passenger. The most significant factor towards the vibration exposure is the “Body Mass Index (BMI)”, in which the p-value is less than 0.001. This study concludes that the whole-body vibration of a passenger is affected by the orientation of the passenger, operation time and body mass index of passengers on urban rail service.

• Azlis-Sani, J., Zaid, M. F., Yahya, M. N., Ismail, S. M. S. S. M., Ahmad Tajedi, N. A., Aziz, R. A., & Zein, R. M. (2015). Evaluation of whole body vibration and back pain problem among light rapid transit (LRT) Drivers. Applied Mechanics and Materials, 773-774, 845-849. https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.773-774.845

• Dumitriu, M. (2013). Evaluation of the comfort index in railway vehicles depending on the vertical suspension features. Annals of Faculty Engineering Hunedoara, 11(4), 23-32.

• Fateh, A., Hejazi, F., Ramanathan, R. A., & Jaffar, M. S. (2016). Seismic response of a light rail transit station equipped with braced viscous damper. Pertanika Journal of Science and Technology, 24(2), 273-283.

• Gągorowski, A. (2010). Simulation study on stiffness of suspension seat in the aspect of the vibration assessment affecting a vehicle driver. Logistics and Transport, 11, 55-62.

• Griffin, M. J., & Erdreich, J. (1991). Handbook of Human Vibration. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 90 (4), Article 2213. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.401606

• Hasnan, K., Bakhsh, Q., Ahmed, A., Ali, D., & Jamali, A. R. (2018). Analysis of WBV on standing and seated passengers during off-peak operation in KL monorail. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 324(1), 2-7. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/324/1/012003

• Ismail, A. R., Nuawi, M. Z., How, C. W., Kamaruddin, N. F., Nor, M. J. M., & Makhtar, N. K. (2010). Whole body vibration exposure to train passenger. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 7(3), 352-359. https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2010.352.359

• ISO, I. (1997). 2631-1: Mechanical vibration and shock-evaluation of human exposure to whole-body vibration-Part 1: General requirements. ISO.

• Karakasis, K., Skarlatos, D., & Zakinthinos, T. (2005). A factorial analysis for the determination of an optimal train speed with a desired ride comfort. Applied Acoustics, 66(10), 1121-1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2005.02.006

• Kim, Y. G., Choi, S., Kim, S. W., Kim, Y. M., & Park, T. W. (2009). An experimental study on the ride comfort of the Korean high-speed train. Experimental Techniques, 33(6), 30-37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1567.2008.00419.x

• Kumar, V., & Saran, V. H. (2014). Influence of reading format on reading activity under uniaxial whole body vibration. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 44(4), 520-527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ergon.2014.05.004

• Kumara, V., Saranb, V. H., & Guruguntla, V. (2013, December 18-20). Study of vibration dose value and discomfort due to whole body vibration exposure for a two wheeler drive. In Proceedings of the 1st International and 16th National Conference on Machines and Mechanisms (iNaCoMM2013) (pp. 947-952). IIT Roorkee, India.

• Mohajer, N., Abdi, H., Nahavandi, S., & Nelson, K. (2017). Directional and sectional ride comfort estimation using an integrated human biomechanical-seat foam model. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 403, 38-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsv.2017.05.019

• Mortimer, M., Wiktorin, C., Pernold, G., Svensson, H., & Vingård, E. (2001). Sports activities, body weight and smoking in relation to low-back pain: A population-based case-referent study. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 11(3), 178-184. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1524-4725.2001. 110308.x

• Munawir, T. I. T., Samah, A. A. A., Rosle, M. A. A., Azlis-Sani, J., Hasnan, K., Sabri, S. M., Ismail, S. M., Yunos, M. N. A. M., & Bin, T. Y. (2017). A comparison study on the assessment of ride comfort for LRT passengers. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 226, No. 1, p. 012039). IOP Publishing.https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/226/1/012039

• Nuawi, M. Z., Ismail, A. R., Nor, M. J. M., & Rahman, M. M. (2011). Comparative study of whole-body vibration exposure between train and car passengers: A case study in malaysia. International Journal of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, 4, 490-503.

• Park, M., Fukuda, T., Kim, T., & Maeda, S. (2013). Health risk evaluation of whole-body vibration by ISO 2631-5 and ISO 2631-1 for operators of agricultural tractors and recreational vehicles. Industrial Health, 51(3), 364-370. https://doi.org/10.2486/indhealth.2012-0045

• Pradhan, S., Samantaray, A. K., & Bhattarcharyya, R. (2017). Evaluation of ride comfort in a railway passenger vehicle with integrated vehicle and human body bond graph model. In ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (Vol. 58479, p. V012T16A013). American Society of Mechanical Engineers. https://doi.org/10.1115/IMECE2017-71288

• Schwarze, S., Notbohm, G., Dupuis, H., & Härtung, E. (1998). Dose-response relationships between whole-body vibration and lumbar disk disease - A field study on 388 drivers of different vehicles. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 215(4), 613-628. https://doi.org/10.1006/jsvi.1998.1602

• Smith, D. L., Chang, J., Cohen, D., Foley, J., & Glassco, R. (2005, November 6-10). A simulation approach for evaluating the relative safety impact of driver distraction during secondary tasks. In 12th World Congress on ITS (pp. 1-12). San Francisco, California.

• Tuladhar, S. R., Khomchuk, P., & Sivananthan, S. (2018). Estimating passenger loading on train cars using accelerometer. ArXiv Publishing.

• Wang, X., Fan, T., Li, W., Yu, R., Bullock, D., Wu, B., & Tremont, P. (2016). Speed variation during peak and off-peak hours on urban arterials in Shanghai. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 67, 84-94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2016.02.005

• Zhou, C., Dai, P., Wang, F., & Zhang, Z. (2016). Predicting the passenger demand on bus services for mobile users. Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 25(2013), 48-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2015.10.003