Substructure Coordination Method for Evaluating Vehicle-Induced Soil Vibrations in Vibration-Reducing Slab Tracks

This study addresses the challenge of low computational efficiency in analyzing vehicle-induced far-field ground vibrations within large scale dynamic systems. A substructure coordination method is proposed based on the vehicle–track–soil finite element method (FEM) and differential quadrature finite element method (DQFEM) coupled dynamic model. This method exploits the distinct frequency characteristics of near-field and far-field soil vibrations to couple finite elements of varying sizes. By increasing the size of the far-field soil finite elements, the total degrees of freedom (DOFs) of the vehicle–track–soil system are reduced, significantly improving computational efficiency. The accuracy of the proposed method is validated through comparisons between matching and non-matching mesh elements. Furthermore, comparisons are conducted to elucidate the advantages of different substructure coordination methods. Finally, the method is applied to analyze soil vibrations, investigating the time- and frequency-domain characteristics of near- and far-field vibrations and quantitatively evaluating the effectiveness of different vibration isolation measures.