Vibration and noise reduction properties of different damped rails in high-speed railway

Wheel/rail rolling noise is the major composition of railway noise pollution. With the rapid development of high-speed railway, the increasing vehicle speed results in higher railway vibration and noise level. Setting damping material on rail waist is an effective control method for mitigating wheel/rail vibration and noise at the source. Damping treatments of rails can be classified into monolayer constrained damped rail, multilayer constrained damped rail and labyrinth constrained damped rail according to structure type. In order to select an appropriate type of damped rail for ballastless track in high-speed railway, vibration and acoustic radiated characteristics of standard rail and the three typical damped rails were compared using vibro-acoustic radiation models for ballastless track system established by the collaborative simulation of FEM/BEM, and the wheel/ rail tread roughness was converted into high-speed wheel/rail interaction force as external excitation. By comparison, using labyrinth constrained damped rail in high-speed railway is recommended, and the suggested value for the damping layer thickness is also provided.