Vertical vibration attenuation in railway track: A wave approach

A wave approach is used to determine the attenuation of vertical bending vi brations along an infinite railway track. An innovation is the inclusion of the effects of the second rail, and particularly the "mode" defined by its phase delay with respect to the vibrations of the first rail. This "mode" could refer to the two rails vibrating symmetrically (in-phase) or antisymm etrically (out-of-phase), for example. The results show that this "mode" sh ape can strongly influence the attenuation at some frequencies. A small par ametric study provides results on the effect of some track design parameter s on the attenuation behaviour. (C) 2001 Academic Press.