TY - JOUR A1 - Auersch, Lutz T1 - Excitation of ground vibration due to the passage of trains over a track with trackbed irregularities and a varying support stiffness N2 - Train-induced ground vibration can be excited by wheel and track irregularities and by two kinds of irregularities of the soil, by geometric irregularities or by the spatially varying soil stiffness. For both types of irregularities, the effective track irregularity on top of the track is calculated in wavenumber domain and with wavenumber integrals. For a general multi-beam track model, the wavenumber integrals are solved numerically. The irregularities of the soil are filtered by the track when transferred from the bottom to the top of the track. The high-wavenumber irregularities are strongly reduced due to the bending stiffness of the track and the compliance of the support. In addition, soft track elements reduce directly the stiffness variation of the support. Therefore, the mitigation effect of elastic track elements for these excitation components seems to be important. For under-sleeper pads and slab tracks, calculation and measurements are presented including additional excitation components and the dynamic vehicle–track interaction, and the relevance of the excitation mechanisms is discussed based on the dynamic forces which are acting on the ground. Due to the restricted amplitudes, the parametric excitation by the stiffness variation seems to be less important than the geometric irregularities. The calculations yield the correct trends of the measurements and many details of the measured ballast, slab, and under-sleeper-pad tracks. KW - Varying track stiffness KW - Geometric trackbed irregularities KW - Multi-beam-on-support model KW - Elastic track elements KW - Parametric excitation PY - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/00423114.2014.968173 SN - 0042-3114 VL - 53 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 29 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - Basingstoke, Hants. AN - OPUS4-33032 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Auersch, Lutz T1 - Force and ground vibration reduction of railway tracks with elastic elements N2 - The reduction of train-induced ground vibration by elastic elements such as rail pads and sleeper pads has been analyzed by a combined finite-element boundary-element method. The dynamic compliance of the track, the transfer function of the total force on the ground and the ground vibration ratios have been calculated for a variety of isolated and un-isolated track systems. It has been found that the soil force transfer, which describes the excitation force of the soil, is an appropriate quantity to predict the reduction of the ground vibration and the effectiveness of isolated tracks. All force transfer functions of isolated tracks display a vehicle–track resonance where the wheelset on the compliant track is excited by wheel and track irregularities. At higher frequencies, considerable reductions of the amplitudes are observed as the benefit of the resilient element. The influence of the stiffness of the rail or sleeper pads, the ballast and the soil, and the mass of the sleeper and the wheelset on the resonance frequency and the reduction has been investigated. Sleeper pads are advantageous due to the higher mass that is elastically supported compared to the rail-pad track system. The combination of elastic rail and sleeper pads has been found to be disadvantageous, as the second resonance occurs in the frequency range of intended reduction. KW - Railway KW - Track KW - Rail pad KW - Sleeper pad KW - Force transfer KW - Ground vibration KW - Reduction PY - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1077546313507099 SN - 1077-5463 SN - 1741-2986 VL - 21 IS - 11 SP - 2246 EP - 2258 PB - Sage Science Press CY - Thousand Oaks, CA, USA AN - OPUS4-33682 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Auersch, Lutz A1 - Said, Samir T1 - Comparison of different dispersion evaluation methods and a case history with the inversion to a soil model, related admittance functions, and the prediction of train-induced ground vibration N2 - Ground vibrations due to different technical sources are analysed in theory and experiment for the dispersion of Rayleigh waves and the admittance spectra. Both tasks are theoretically based on the same concept: The admittance function in frequency–wavenumber domain yields the dispersion as its maxima, and the admittance function in space domain is obtained by integrating it over the wavenumbers. On the experimental side, many signal processing methods have been applied to many sites and have been developed by the authors in the last 35 years, i.e., time-domain methods, including the cross-correlation method, and frequency-domain methods such as the spectral analysis of surface waves with two or multiple sensors, the wavenumber-transform method, and the spatial autocorrelation method. All methods are presented by their basic formula and by at least one example site. Different sensor arrays and deterministic and stochastic sources have been tested for the spatial autocorrelation method and the wavenumber-transform method at several sites. In addition, all frequency-domain methods are presented for a specific layered site comparing their quality. The evaluated dispersion curves are very similar, but a somewhat higher frequency range has been found for the fastest method, i.e., the multi-sensor spectral-analysis-of-surface-waves method. The theoretical solutions have been used for the inversion of the measured dispersion to the soil profile of the specific layered soil. The theoretical soil model has subsequently been used to predict the ground vibration spectra of hammer and railway excitation that exhibit a good agreement with the corresponding measurements. Thus, the contribution shows the benefit of active and passive seismic methods for the prediction of railway vibration, including a new version of the spatial autocorrelation method for technical vibrations. On the other hand, technical and namely railway vibrations are considered a seismic source for the exploration of near surface soils. PY - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3997/1873-0604.2015011 SN - 1569-4445 VL - 13 IS - 2 SP - 127 EP - 142 PB - EAGE - European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers CY - Houten AN - OPUS4-33836 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -