The environmental impact of the railways operations – the dependence of speed on the level of vibration emission

Abstract

Railway transport plays a significant role in shaping the quality of the environment. Vibration from railways is a big concern for engineers. Because of its negative impact on the surrounding area, it is also an environmental problem. The paper deals with the dependence of speed on the level of vibration emission. It based on the experimental study, which was done during the passage of the Pendolino train (EMU 250). Accredited Laboratory of Structural Mechanics at Cracow University of Technology has performed in situ measurements. Speed of the train was varying between 80 and 250 km/h. The evaluated construction was located at distance of approximately 50 m from the railroad. Indicators of the perceptibility of vibration through constructions (WODB) were used to access the impact of vibrations on the building. The innovation of this publication is the application of multi-criteria decision analysis methods for assessing the impact of vibration. The ELECTRE (Elimination and Choice Expressing Reality) methods to evaluate the increase in vibration emission depending on the speed for each frequency band are used. The limits specified by Polish standards in any of the passages have not been exceeded. As proven in the paper, a train speed increase does not uniformly make the vibration higher in each frequency band.