Railway noise generated by high-speed trains

Abstract

High speed trains have been running for almost 50 years in many countries. High speed railway systems differ from each other in terms of rolling stock, track, commercial speed, operating conditions, maintenance. Then, the environmental noise varies according to all these parameters. To improve the insertion of high speed railway systems in the environment, noise mitigation measures have been developed. Each one provides a noise reduction for the considered system. Combinations of the noise reduction solutions are also very efficient and cost effective. A state of the art of pass-by noise measurement results from several high-speed railway systems all around the world is presented and discussed. The main noise sources of high speed railway system, the rolling noise, the aerodynamic noise and the equipment noise, are described. The measurement and calculation methods to characterise the sources are presented. Each mitigation measure and its efficiency are described. As a conclusion, some indications for future research topics in high speed railway noise are proposed.