Keywords: ground vibration, axle loads, irregularities, varying stiffness.

Usually, geometric irregularities are considered as the main cause of ground vibrations from trains. A varying stiffness of the track, the track support and the soil can also generate ground vibrations. The regular stiffness variation of the track on and between the sleepers results in a deterministic dynamic axle load. The random stiffness variation of the track support yields also dynamic axle loads which are generated by the acceleration of the unsprung mass (from the varying wheel displacements under the static axle load). The random stiffness variation has a second effect. The pulses from the passage of the static axle loads are superposed regularly to the quasi-static response, but also irregularly to yield a “scattered” part of the axle pulses. The same holds for a random variation of the soil stiffness. All these effects of stiffness variations have been calculated by wavenumber-domain multi-beam track models, a random finite-element soil model and the superposition of axle impulses in a stochastic simulation. The results are confronted with many measurements at different sites. It is concluded that the stiffness variation of the track and the soil generate an important ground vibration component near railway lines.

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