Prediction of Railway Induced Vibration and Ground Borne Noise Exposure in Building and Associated Annoyance

Abstract

This paper presents the prediction model used in the European project RIVAS to evaluate the performances of the mitigation measures in reducing railway induced vibration and ground borne noise inside buildings. A robust empirical model (Vibra-2 from SBB) has been used, with the help of (i) a ground structure calculation model (MEFISSTO from CSTB) to estimate the effect of ground and building foundation changes on vibration immission, and (ii) building acoustics theory to estimate ground borne noise from floor vibration. The paper also presents the exposure descriptors and the associated exposure-response relationships chosen to evaluate the mitigation measures inside buildings in terms of attenuation of vibration and ground borne noise exposure and corresponding decrease of annoyance. Four exposure descriptors have been used: maximum values and equivalent values of both W_m-weighted vibration and A-weighted ground borne noise; an idealized exposure-response curve, the same for all descriptors has been retained, with target values deduced from existing exposure-response curves.