Ventilation of a Densely Occupied Multi-Purpose Railway Compartment: Subjective Thermal Comfort Assessment

Kurzfassung

We report on a thermal comfort study performed in a generic multi-purpose train compartment currently configured with 13 semi-standing seats, representing a high-density passenger area with ceiling-based mixing-ventilation. In future studies, this multi-purpose compartment will also be equipped as business meeting room and as a family compartment, addressing the research on the requirements of the ventilation system to ensure thermal comfort at the different operational conditions. The subjective comfort evaluation is based on the questionnaires of 72 test persons, conducted in October 2025. They were split into six groups of twelve subjects and the 13th chair was occupied by the test conductor. Each test run lasted 90 minutes and included two ventilation flow rate settings (high and low) under either summer or winter ambient conditions. First, preliminary results revealed that there is no obvious effect of the air flow rate on the overall climate satisfaction, neither in winter nor in summer conditions (significance analysis still open). Further, the results indicated decreasing perceived temperatures during the course of the test at summer conditions, resulting in increasing thermal comfort. Contradictory, at the winter conditions, the decreasing perceived temperatures lead to decreasing thermal comfort during the course of the test. An accompanying objective measurement campaign using thermal manikins and various experimental techniques to capture temperatures, velocities and equivalent temperatures was performed as well. This study will also be presented at the conference in detail by Pascal Lange. The findings contribute to the conference topics “thermal comfort parameters and human perception”, “demand-controlled ventilation approaches” and “applications: high-occupancy spaces”.