Dynamic interaction between rail vehicles and vibration-attenuating slab tracks

The ground vibration and noise induced by trains are among the most concerned issues in the field of urban railway transportation. Therefore, many types of vibration-attenuating slab tracks have been brough in urban railways to minimize train induced vibration and noise. Vibration-attenuating slab tracks usually have a soft support system than that of traditional slab tracks, which on the other hand affects the vehicle-track interaction. This paper presents a study on the dynamic interaction between urban railway vehicles and vibration-attenuating slab tracks, in which four typical elastic vibration -attenuating slab tracks including the resilient-fastener slab track, elastic-supporting-block track, ladder-type sleeper track and floating-slab track are considered. A three-dimensional dynamic model of a metro train running on different vibration-attenuating slab tracks is formulated. This model is cap-able of predicting the vehicle-track interactions under various wheel-rail excitations. The dynamic char-acteristics of wheel-rail interaction induced by impulsive, harmonic and random track defects of two metro vehicles travelling on the four vibration-attenuating slab tracks are compared in detail. The influ-ence of track viscoelastic properties on vehicle-track interaction is reported. The results show that the properties of vibration-attenuating slab tracks have a significant effect on vehicle-track dynamic interac-tions. The dynamic responses of wheel-rail forces of the vehicles travelling on different vibration-attenuating slab tracks are significantly different. The elastic-supporting-block track has the best perfor-mance in absorbing mid-and high-frequency wheel-rail forces. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.