RailVib - Railway vibrations from tunnels

Objective

Railway tunnels avoid direct acoustic annoyance by railway traffic. However, vibrations from tunnels propagate through the soil and lead to disturbances by percieved low frequency vibrations.

The objective of this project is to develop and implement a mathematical model that takes a moving vibrating load into account. Furthermore, the surrounding soil is modeled as an anisotropic material, consisting of layers with arbitrary orientation.

Methods

The propagation of the vibrations inside the tunnel are modelled by the finite element method (FEM), where the superstructure of the tunnel and the railway are considered. Vibrations outside the tunnel, propagating through the (infiinite) soil are modelled by the boundary element method (BEM). For a detailed model of the whole system, both methods have to be coupled.