Prediction and Measurement of Vibration on a Modern Concrete Railway Bridge Fitted with Resilient Rail Fasteners

The passage of a train over a railway bridge has been recognised as an important source of noise in urban environments. To help find means to reduce it, an accurate model for this noise is required. Prediction of the bridge vibration is the main challenge in determining the structure-borne noise. The computational cost of such an analysis using conventional Finite Element (FE) method is prohibitive, due to the enormous number of modes of vibration in the frequency range of interest. Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) has therefore been used to model bridges in the past. However, this can be difficult to apply to bridges that have complex cross-sectional geometry.