A ground-borne vibration assessment model for rail systems at-grade

Abstract

Due to the increasing number and kilometres of new railways lines, either high speed railway lines or commuter lines, as well as the increasing in human sensitivity versus ground-borne vibration generated for this mean of transport, a sustained growth in complaints due to the annoyance caused by railway vibrations has been detected. In order to predict the field vibrations caused by new railway lines in the project stage, which will be useful to design appropriate countermeasures, in the present work a ground-borne vibration model for rail systems at-grade developed by the authors is validated with experimental measurements in an existing commuter railway line. It checked that this model is a very useful tool to predict the vibration field that will be caused by a railway infrastructure in the planning stage of the project.