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Project

RIVAS: Railway Induced Vibration Abatement Solutions.

Ground vribration, effected by rail services, is an important environmental concern, affecting European citizens nearby any rail infrastructure. Surveys show that many Europeans are subjected to annoying levels of feelable vibration and vibration-induced noise. Although solutions are available for track in tunnels, tracks at grade are a much more extensive problem even for vibration-induced noise. However, solutions for tracks at grade are lacking: for some problems currently no feasible solutions at reasonable cost are available. A group of railway operators, infrastructure managers, infrastructure and rolling stock manufacturers, and construciton companies, end users of vibration mitigation technology, have gathered, to propose a major project for Railway Induced Vibration Abatement Solutions (RIVAS). They aim at providing tools and methods to reduce vibration below the threshold of perception and induced noise below background levels by 2013. The group includes the expertise of research organisations and universities with specialist laboratory and theoretical modelling facilities. The issues are treated in a holistic way with the focus on reducing the annoyance to lineside residents. The project examines all virbration effects and aspects of the system: vehicle, track, propagation , freight and high-speed rail services. WP1 establishes the test procedures to monitor and control the performance of vibration mitigation measures under realistic conditions. WP2 develops and evaluates mitigation measures based on reducing the excitation of vibration at the vehicle-track interface by improved maintenance. WP3 develops and evaluates mitigations measures for ballasted and slab tracks. WP4 will develop and evaluated mitigation measures based on sub-grade improvement and ground barriers within the railway infrastructure. WP5 addresses the impact of the vehicle. Each of the solutions is to be validated with field tests on the major European rail networks represented in RIVAS.
Date:1 Feb 2011 →  31 Jan 2014
Keywords:Ground vibration, Railway, Induced noise, Track, Train, Mitigation