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            Commuter Rail Seat Tests in Open-Bay Configuration
      

      
  Document Series
              Technical Reports


      
  Author
          Federal Railroad Administration


      
Report Number
              DOT/FRA/ORD-22/16

  Office
              RDI-22


      Subject
                    Crashworthiness - Passenger Equipment


      
  Keywords
              Passenger seats, open-bay, facing seats, dynamic testing, structural integrity, occupant safety, crashworthiness, dynamic sled testing, anthropomorphic test device, ATD, rail passenger safety, secondary impacts


      

      
      
              
                  
      
              
  Document
              Open Bay Seating-Ar1.pdf (8.33 MB)

      
              Open-bay seating is a common configuration in U.S. passenger railcars. The current version of the American Public Transportation Association’s safety standard on passenger seating (APTA PR-CS-S-016-99, Rev. 3) requires open-bay seats to be tested if more than 50 percent of a car’s seating is configured as open-bay. The objective of this research study was to determine if existing seats  developed for use in a row-to-row configuration would comply with the seat safety standard requirements in the open-bay configuration without any design modifications. Of the four seat types tested, only one satisfied all of the human injury criteria.
      
            
      
      
              Last updated: Monday, April 25, 2022 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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