RIVAS - Railway Induced Vibration Abatement Solutions
Overview
Background & policy context:
Ground vibration, effected by rail services, is an important environmental concern, affecting European citizens nearby any rail infrastructure. Surveys show that many Europeans are subjected to annoying levels of vibration and vibration-induced noise. Although solutions are available for tracks in tunnels, tracks at grade are a much more extensive problem even for vibration-induced noise.
However, solutions for tracks at grade are lacking: for some problems currently no feasible solutions at reasonable cost are available. A group of railway operators, infrastructure managers, infrastructure and rolling stock manufacturers, and construction companies, end users of vibration mitigation technology, have gathered, and have combined forces in the Railway Induced Vibration Abatement Solutions (RIVAS) project.
Objectives:
Providing tools and methods to reduce vibration below the threshold of perception and induced noise below background levels by 2013. The group includes the expertise of research organisations and universities with specialist laboratory and theoretical modelling facilities.
Methodology:
The issues are treated in a holistic way with the focus on reducing the annoyance to line side residents. The project examines all vibration effects and aspects of the system: vehicle, track, propagation, freight and high-speed rail services.
- WP1 establishes the test procedures to monitor and control the performance of vibration mitigation measures under realistic conditions;
- WP2 develops and evaluates mitigation measures based on reducing the excitation of vibration at the vehicle' track interface by improved maintenance;
- WP3 develops and evaluates mitigation measures for ballasted and slab tracks;
- WP4 will develop and evaluate mitigation measures based on sub-grade improvement and ground barriers within the railway infrastructure;
- WP5 addresses the impact of the vehicle.
Each of the solutions is to be validated with field tests on the major European rail networks represented in RIVAS.
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