Investigation of the Noise Emitted from Elevated Urban Rail Transit Paved with Various Resilient Tracks

Based on the dynamic receptance method, a vehicle-track-bridge interaction model was developed to calculate the wheel-rail interaction forces and the forces transmitted to the bridge in an elevated urban rail transit system. A prediction model integrating the finite element method-boundary element method (FEM-BEM) and the statistical energy analysis (SEA) method was established to obtain the noise from the main girder, track slab, and wheel-rail system for elevated urban rail transit. The calculated results agree well with the measured data. Thereafter, the noise radiation characteristics of a single source and the total noise of elevated urban rail transit systems with resilient fasteners, trapezoidal sleepers, and steel spring floating slabs were investigated. The results demonstrate that the noise prediction model for elevated urban rail transit that was developed in this study is effective. The diversity of track forms altered the noise radiation field of elevated urban rail transit systems significantly. Compared to monolithic track beds, where the fastener stiffness is assumed to be 60 × 10⁶ N/m (MTB_60), steel spring floating slab tracks (FSTs), trapezoidal sleeper tracks (TSTs), and resilient fasteners with a stiffness of 40 × 10⁶ N/m (MTB_40) and 20 × 10⁶ N/m (MTB_20) can reduce bridge-borne noise by 24.6 dB, 8.8 dB, 2.1 dB, and 4.2 dB, respectively. These vibration-mitigating tracks can decrease the radiated noise from the track slab by -0.7 dB, -0.6 dB, 2.5 dB, and 2.6 dB, but increase wheel-rail noise by 0.4 dB, 0.8 dB, 1.3 dB, and 2.4 dB, respectively. The noise emanating from the main girder and the track slab was dominant in the linear weighting of the total noise of the elevated section with MTBs. For the TST and FST, the radiated noise from the track slab contributed most to the total noise.