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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 110
PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY: RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE
Edited by: J. Pombo
Paper 79

Analysis of Train Derailment Caused by Natural Disasters in the Railways of Japan

H. Suzuki

Research and Development Centre, East Japan Railway Company, Saitama, Japan

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
H. Suzuki, "Analysis of Train Derailment Caused by Natural Disasters in the Railways of Japan", in J. Pombo, (Editor), "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Railway Technology: Research, Development and Maintenance", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 79, 2016. doi:10.4203/ccp.110.79
Keywords: natural disaster, train derailment, decrease trend, downward jump, train speed, recognized distance, slow speed operation.

Summary
This study investigated the trend and jump (discontinuous change) in the number of train derailments caused by slope failure, rainfall and rockfall in the former Japanese National Railways and the present Japan Railway group. The number of train derailments has shown a deceasing trend from 1966 to 2014. The failures caused by slope failure and rainfall has two downward jumps and the failures caused by rockfall has one downward jump from 1966 to 2014. Furthermore, the study analysed the train speed at the time of the train derailment. As a result, it is found that there is a domain in which train derailments have occurred and one in which these have not occurred, in relation to train speed at the time when the driver recognized the disaster (train speed) and the distance from the point where the driver recognized the disaster to the point of the disaster occurrence (recognized distance). The upper limit of recognized distance becomes shorter, the slower train speed becomes. Therefore, in preventing train derailments, the effect of reducing speed is very significant.

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