Radiation of rail noise regarding surface impedance of ground by using wavenumber domain finite and boundary element

초록

An important source of noise from railways is rolling noise caused by wheel and rail vibrations induced by acoustic roughness at the wheel-rail contact. In conventional approaches to predicting rail noise, the rail is regarded as placed in a free space so that the reflection from the ground is not included. However, in order to predict rail noise close to the rail, the effect of the ground should be contained in the analysis. In this study the rail noise reflected from the ground is investigated using the wavenumber domain finite element and boundary element methods. First, two rail models, one using rail attached to the rigid ground and one using rail located above rigid ground, are considered and examined to determine the rigid ground effect in terms of the radiation efficiency. From this analysis, it was found that the two models give considerably different results, so that the distance between the rail and the ground is an important factor. Second, an impedance condition was set for the ground and the effect of the ground impedance on the rail noise was evaluated for the two rail models.