Although rail is widely acknowledged to be the transport mode with the lowest environmental impact, noise and vibration caused by the interaction between the train and the track remains an important issue for the railway sector as a whole.
Furthermore, there is now greater insight into the effects of noise and vibration emissions on local residents and growing pressure on railway undertakings and infrastructure managers to keep reducing emission levels wherever feasible.
The Train Track Interaction (TTI) Sector within the UIC Rail System Department (RSD) has set out to address these concerns and provide roadmaps on this topic with a view to offering new solutions.
This White Paper on Acoustics reflects the current situation and main issues and provides information on proposals for technical projects to conduct research and devise solutions for infrastructure managers (IM) and railway undertakings (RU).
The White Paper has been drafted and finalised by the TTI Subgroup (SG) for Aerodynamics and Acoustics, composed of highly qualified experts. The participants worked together to share their knowledge and information on relevant ongoing projects.
The various topics were organised into the following three main categories:
- Noise source generation
- Acoustic comfort, subjective perception and psychoacoustic indicators
- Ground-borne vibration
It became evident during this process that the field of acoustics presents significant challenges to global railway development.
Efforts need to be made to support the proposals put forward in this White Paper in order to prepare operational and technical subsystems (comprising both infrastructure and rolling stock) for the new acoustics requirements in line with the European Commission’s existing vision for the future of the railways.
These efforts shall complement the actions that have already been implemented, as well as those currently underway within the context of international frameworks for research and development, such as Shift2Rail (S2R) and the Innovation Projects (IP), lighthouse activities, and other research and framework programmes.
You can find the document on the UIC ETF-Shop:
https://www.shop-etf.com/en/train-track-interaction-sector-acoustics.html
