Feeling is believing

When it comes to assessing the design of products that we are expected to interact with, to sit on, climb on, grip, push or pull, there is no substitute for physically interacting with them.

At DCA, we are always looking for new ways to speed up the process of turning our ideas into physical rigs, models and prototypes to test out new designs.

A good example of this is the forth-coming introduction of Rail Industry Guidance GMGN2696, which addresses the issue of seat comfort. As part of our response to this new Guidance, we have created our own seat comfort test rig to simulate passenger loading on the seat. In combination with pressure pad instrumentation, this test rig has allowed us to test and assess the potential comfort of proposed seat geometries and cushion profiles and materials before committing to pre-production solutions and user trials.

A detailed description of this work was recently published in an article in the June 2023 issue of Rail Professional magazine.