Railway noise: A new paradigm for SNCF acousticians

Abstract

The environmental noise of the railway system is an important weakness for the acceptability of this means of transportation, but it could also be considered as an opportunity for radical innovation. Saying so, we postulate that “noise and sound” could be both, a physical and a societal item. Railway industries, operators and infrastructure managers work to understand the physical mechanisms responsible for noise in order to reduce it. To be compliant with the regulations and preserve the traffic, infrastructure managers and operators spent their money into mitigation measures, mainly at source or on propagation path (noise barriers). Considering the increase of passenger and/or freight traffic, an automatic approach for mitigation measures implementation could no longer be adopted. SNCF has developed since 2010 an expertise in innovative design methodology using the DKCP method (Define-Knowledge-Concept-Project), based on C–K theory of innovative design (Concept–Knowledge) developed at Mines ParisTech, to revisit research topics and roadmaps in a radical way. That method has been applied to deal with challenge to design acoustics futures. Theoretical foundations of this innovative method are briefly presented in the paper. Then, the application of the method to define a new roadmap of research projects in railway noise is described in detail as well as the first implementations of the subsequent projects. The paper focuses on some examples of innovative projects. Now, for SNCF noise and sound experts, the paradigm has changed and the main objective of this paper is to share this new experience with railway colleagues.