Minimizing noise from metro viaduct railway lines by means of elastic mats and fully closed noise barriers

Abstract

An adverse effect of urban elevated rail transit systems is the associated noise, which has become a source of environmental complaints. In order to effectively address this problem, an in situ experiment has been conducted on the elevated sections of Hangzhou Metro Line 1 involving three cases: a 2.2 m vertical noise barrier with integrated bed track, a 2.2 m vertical noise barrier with an elastic mat floating slab track, and a 5.1 m fully enclosed noise barrier with an elastic mat floating slab track. The noise reduction effects of the elastic mats and the two kinds of noise barriers for metro viaduct railway lines were evaluated, and the mechanisms of these countermeasures were analysed. The results show that elastic mats can effectively reduce the transmission of wheel–rail vibration energy into the bridge, thus decreasing bridge-borne noise; meanwhile, the elastic mats could lead to an increase in wheel–rail noise. An excellent noise reduction effect was achieved in the area below and near the bottom of the bridge, while an increased noise effect was observed close to the area above and near the rail surface. The fully enclosed noise barrier controlled the propagation of wheel–rail noise more effectively than the vertical noise barriers, but no difference was found between these two kinds of noise barriers in controlling bridge-borne noise.