Efficacy of a sheet pile wall as a wave barrier for railway induced ground vibration

Abstract

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a sheet pile wall to reduce railway induced vibration transmission by means of field measurements and numerical simulations. At Furet, Sweden, a sheet pile wall has been installed in the soil near the track to reduce train induced vibrations in houses close to the track. The depth of the sheet piles is 12 m with every fourth pile extended to 18 m. The efficacy of the wall is determined from in situ measurements of free field vibrations during train passages before and after installation of the sheet pile wall. The field test shows that the sheet pile wall reduces vibrations from 4 Hz upwards. Up till 16 − 20 Hz, the performance generally increases with frequency and typically decreases with increasing distance behind the wall. The performance is further studied by means of two-and-a-half-dimensional coupled finite element -boundary element models. The sheet pile wall is modeled as an orthotropic plate using finite elements, while the soil is modeled as a layered halfspace using boundary elements. The sheet pile wall acts as a stiff wave barrier and the efficacy is determined by the depth and the stiffness contrast with soil. The reduction of vibration levels is entirely due to the relatively high axial stiffness and plate bending stiffness with respect to the horizontal axis of the sheet pile wall; the plate bending stiffness with respect to the vertical axis is too low to affect the transmission of vibrations. Therefore, it is important to take into account the orthotropic behaviour of the sheet pile wall. It is concluded that a sheet pile wall can effectively act as a wave barrier in soft soil conditions provided that the wall is sufficiently deep.

Sols structurés sous sollicitation dynamique : des métamatériaux en géotechnique

“…Ces travaux montrent une réduction d'amplitude du signal en fonction des caractéristiques géométriques de la barrière. Citons également les travaux plus récents sur la mesure in situ du trafic ferroviaire (Semblat et al, 2011) couplé avec une caractérisation dynamique des sols en laboratoire ainsi que des essais sur des palplanches (Dijckmans et al, 2016).…”

Influence of Vibration Isolator Failure on Vehicle Operation Performance and Floating Slab Track Structure Vibration Reduction Effectiveness

“…erefore, vibration reduction is required in sensitive areas along subway lines. Vibration reduction measures can be divided into three types based on vibration source, propagation mode, and effectiveness: (i) active isolation of vibration source; (ii) termination of vibration propagation [4][5][6][7][8][9]; (iii) passive vibration isolation of vibrating object. First used for active vibration source isolation in Germany in 1965, floating slab tracks have good vibration reduction properties, and their use in controlling vibration from subways has since become more widespread [10,11].…”

A Boundary Algebraic Formulation for Plane Strain Elastodynamic Scattering

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