Motion sickness. Part II. Experimental verification on the railways of a model for predicting motion sickness incidence

This is the second part of a two-part paper in which a new theoretical approach for predicting motion sickness is experimentally validated by field measurements. In this paper an extended research activity aimed at the validation of a theoretical model (developed by the authors to evaluate the MSI index) is illustrated. The MSI index (Motion Sickness Incidence) represents the percentage of people that vomit within a certain time interval and was defined to evaluate the passengers’ response to low frequency motions. The activity was aimed to a rail scenario and it was conducted together with a well-known company in the railway industry. The rail tests were performed in Slovenia during 2005 (European research project “FACT: Fast and Comfortable Trains”). In the paper a comparison is made between the results, expressed in terms of MSI values and time histories, obtained from experimental results (subjective measures acquired using questionnaires) and by the authors’ theoretical model (starting from experimental objective measures acquired in the form of acceleration time histories).