Reduction of railway rolling noise using periodically installed rail dampers with particle damping for urban rail systems

Rolling noise is the dominant noise source on straight metro railways, predominantly generated by track vibrations at frequencies below 2000 Hz. To address this issue, a novel rail particle damper (RPD) based on particle damping was developed, offering a significant advance in mitigating railway noise. Unlike traditional approaches, the RPD design was systematically optimized through laboratory experiments and a coupled track–damper model incorporating modal analysis. The coupled track–damper model compared Euler and Timoshenko beam elements in vibration wave propagation and effectively predicted the effective range of the pinned–pinned mode vibrations. Field tests on an operational metro line confirmed the RPD’s efficacy, with reductions in decay rate and noise levels of 3.7 dBA in the near field and 2.4 dBA in the far field. These findings highlight the RPD’s innovative contribution to rail noise control, particularly through its ability to shorten the decay time of vibrational energy and suppress the propagating noise from the decay time-series data. This study establishes a foundation for further refining RPD designs to enhance railway propagating noise and vibration management.