Theoretical Modelling and Effectiveness Study of Slotted Stand-Off Layer Damping Treatment for Rail Vibration and Noise Control

Caiyou Zhao,Ping Wang

doi:10.1155/2015/716382

Abstract

A promising means of reducing railway noise is to increase the damping of the rail, which decreases the vibration of the rail to reduce noise. To achieve this goal, a slotted stand-off layer damping treatment has been developed, and a compound track model with this treatment is developed for investigating the effectiveness of this treatment in terms of the vibration reduction. Through the dynamic analysis of the track undergoing the slotted stand-off layer damping treatment, some guidelines are proposed on the selection of materials and structure parameters for this treatment. In addition, the prototype of the optimal slotted stand-off layer damping treatment has been built and tested in the laboratory. It is found that the slotted stand-off damping treatment shows significant effects in decreasing the amplitude of the accelerance of the rail and a significant reduction of sound emission reflected as the radiation sound pressure level decreases by 8.2 and 9.4 dB at vertical excitation and lateral excitation, respectively, in the frequency range of 0–4000 Hz.

Highlights

With the development of the high-speed railway and urban rail transit, railway noise has become a growing public concern in the world today
It can be observed from these figures that the performance of the slotted stand-off damping treatment placed at the surface of the rail for attenuating the vibrations of the rail waist and rail foot is quite effective in the frequency range of 0–4000 Hz
The measurement procedure was conducted according to ISO 3744 for the source sound power emission calculation in freefield conditions by sound pressure measurements [21]

Summary

Introduction

With the development of the high-speed railway and urban rail transit, railway noise has become a growing public concern in the world today. Extensive work has been conducted to understand the mechanism of railway rolling noise generation [3,4,5,6]. It is an example of the calculations by Thompson with the TWINS software, which have been validated in extensive field measurements [7, 8]. This fact means that rail radiation is one of the significant sources of rolling noise

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Results

Conclusion