TY - JOUR A1 - Auersch, Lutz T1 - Dynamic axle loads on tracks with and without ballast mats - numerical results of three-dimensional vehicle-track-soil models N2 - Ballast mats are an efficient measure to reduce the vibrations near railway lines. The vehicle-track system gets a low eigenfrequency due to the insertion of an elastic ballast mat under the ballast. For frequencies higher than this low vehicle-track eigenfrequency, the forces, which are generating the vibration of the soil, are considerably reduced. In this contribution, a combined finite-element boundary-matrix method is used to calculate a number of completely three-dimensional track models with and without ballast mats. The influence of the important parameters such as the stiffness of the ballast mat, the unsprung vehicle mass, the mass of the track, and the stiffness of the subsoil is investigated. The numerical results are presented as the transfer functions of the total force that is acting on the soil and generating the vibration of the environment. The effectiveness of ballast mats is achieved by division of two of these force functions. The general tendencies for this insertion loss are discussed and a comparison with measurements is given. To come to an improved practical tool for the design of ballast-mat tracks, the finite-element method results are approximated by a simple two-dimensional model of which the solution is given explicitly. KW - Railway track KW - Track dynamic KW - Ballast mat KW - Vibration isolation KW - Insertion loss KW - Finite-element method KW - Track-soil interaction KW - Vehicle-track interaction PY - 2006 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1243/09544097F00105 SN - 0954-4097 VL - 220 IS - 2 SP - 169 EP - 183 PB - Institution of Mechanical Engineers CY - London AN - OPUS4-13723 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -