TY - CONF A1 - Auersch, Lutz A1 - Said, Samir T1 - Dynamic testing of tracks and track sites before and after construction, after damage and after repair N2 - The Federal Institute of Material Research and Testing (BAM) has collected some experience with the testing of damaged, repaired and newly constructed railway tracks. The experimental methods are hammer testing of the track at different positions, hammer testing of the soil, measurement of train passages, and in all cases, measurements with geophones at different positions. The measured signals are evaluated for wave velocities (dispersion of the soil or the track-soil system), for transfer functions (transfer admittances of the soil, compliances of the track in amplitude and phase), and one-third octave band spectra of the track response to hammer and train excitation. These methods are applied at different stages of the track construction. Before track construction, wave velocities and transfer functions of the sub-soil can indicate problems with soft soils. After track construction, a check of the acceptable state of the track can be done by comparison of many excitation positions and track sites. After a track damage (a lose sleeper or a lose plate of a slab track) and after its repair, the sensitivity of the different measurement quantities to different track errors and the achieved improvement of the repair can be determined. The contribution shows examples of all these track situations. T2 - First International Conference on Rail Transportation CY - Chengdu, China DA - 10.7.2017 KW - Track damage KW - Dynamic testing KW - Hammer tests KW - Train passages PY - 2017 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - Southwest Jiaotong University CY - Chengdu, China AN - OPUS4-42090 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Auersch, Lutz A1 - Conreaux, Laurence A1 - Said, Samir A1 - Müller, Roger T1 - The excitation, propagation, and mitigation of train-induced ground vibrations from the axle impulses on the track N2 - Train-induced vibrations in soft ground usually have a strong low-frequency component. This component has a characteristic spectrum which is related to the axle sequence and the speed of the train. Its attenuation with distance is weaker than the attenuation for higher frequencies, and it always dominates the far-field ground vibration. Narrow-band frequency analyses clearly show that this ground vibration component is due to the static axle loads. Axle box vibrations have a different characteristic where the first out-of-roundness of the wheels is the only remarkable low-frequency component. Therefore, the dynamic axle loads from wheel and track irregularities are not the reason for the strong ground vibration component. The moving static axle loads generate the quasi-static response of the soil at very low frequencies and at very near distances. A part of the original impulse spectrum is scattered when it propagates through an inhomogeneous ballast and soil with a randomly varying stiffness. The axle impulses are smoother for a higher bending stiffness or a lower support stiffness (under sleeper pads, under ballast mats) of the track. This mitigation of the ground vibration will be demonstrated by measurements at three sites in Switzerland as well as the characteristic of the soil and axle-box vibrations. T2 - Sixth International Conference on Railway Technology: Research, Development and Maintenance CY - Prague, Czech Republic DA - 01.09.2024 KW - Soil and vehicle measurements KW - Train passages KW - Ground vibration KW - Excitation mechanisms KW - Mitigation KW - Under sleeper pads KW - Under ballast mat PY - 2024 DO - https://doi.org/10.4203/ccc.7.13.2 SN - 2753-3239 VL - 7 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Civil-Comp Press CY - Edinburgh, United Kingdom AN - OPUS4-61240 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -