Effect of rail unevenness correlation on the prediction of ground-borne vibration from railways

Abstract

This paper presents the influence of rail unevenness correlation on the predicted track and ground vibration. The study is based on an integrated railway model in the wavenumber-frequency domain with varying complexity describing the dynamic system of a ballasted track on layered elastic half-space. In order to investigate how ground vibration levels are influenced by taking into account different correlation levels between the two rails, the traction variation across the track-ground interface is included and the track model is discretised laterally including both rails separately and allowing for the pitching motion of the sleepers. The paper presents the effect of the different modelling approaches on the response predictions and compares the dynamic response calculated for a range of model/excitation parameters. Copyright © (2015) by EAA-NAG-ABAV, ISSN 2226-5147 All rights reserved.