Prediction of vibration and noise from steel/composite bridges based on receptance and statistical energy analysis

Abstract

The noise from the elevated lines of rail transit has become a growing problem. This paper presents a new method for the rapid prediction of the structure-borne noise from steel or composite bridges, based on the receptance and Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA), which is essential to the study of the generation mechanism and the design of a low-noise bridge. First, the vertical track-bridge coupled vibration equations in the frequency domain are constructed by simplifying the rail and the bridge as an infinite Timoshenko beam and a finite Euler-Bernoulli beam respectively. Second, all wheel/rail forces acting upon the track are computed by taking a moving wheel-rail roughness spectrum as the excitation to the train-track-bridge system. The displacements of rail and bridge are obtained by substituting wheel/rail forces into the track-bridge coupled vibration equations, and all spring forces on the bridge are calculated by multiplying the stiffness by the deformation of each spring. Then, the input power to the bridge in the SEA model is derived from spring forces and the bridge receptance. The vibration response of the bridge is derived from the solution to the power balance equations of the bridge, and then the structure-borne noise from the bridge is obtained. Finally, a tri-span continuous steel-concrete composite bridge is taken as a numerical example, and the theoretical calculations in terms of the vibration and noise induced by a passing train agree well with the field measurements, verifying the method. The influence of various factors on wheel/rail and spring forces is investigated to simplify the train-track-bridge interaction calculation for predicting the vibration and noise from steel or composite bridges.