Environmental Measures along Shinkansen Lines with FASTECH360 High-Speed Test Trains

Shinkansen speed increases have been studied by JR East with a target of achieving 360 km/h operation speed. JR East carried out running tests using FASTECH360 Shinkansen high-speed test trains from June 2005 to June 2009 in the course of the study. FASTECH360 trains are equipped with new noise reduction technologies in order to reduce wayside noise and tunnel micro-pressure waves, including new low-noise pantographs, pantograph noise insulation plates, noise-absorbing panels at the lower part of cars and circumferential diaphragms between cars. FASTECH360 trains also have nose shapes elongated up to 16 m long as a countermeasure against tunnel micro-pressure waves. JR East continued improvement based on the measurement results of car noise sources acquired using a spiral microphone array after the start of the running tests. JR EAST has been able to reduce wayside noise by 4 to 5 dB compared to the noise generated in coupled operation of series E3 and E2 trains as a result of introducing noise reduction technologies. While JR EAST has not been able to reach the target speed of 360 km/h, it still has successfully operated the coupled train set at around 330 km/h at a noise level equal to the level of present trains in operation running at 275 km/h. Noise at 330 km/h, in other words, is no worse than the present level. Comparison of the two types of nose shape of FASTECH360S has demonstrated that tunnel micro-pressure waves were smaller with the "arrow-line" nose than with the "stream-line" nose for tunnel micro-pressure wave reduction performance. JR EAST also confirmed that tunnel micro-pressure wave reduction performance of the FASTECH360Z (nose length: 13 m) and FASTECH360S (arrow-line nose, nose length: 16 m) are almost equal to each other.