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In railway turnout areas, vertical and horizontal structure irregularities, including geometry and stiffness, result in vibration amplification during the passage of trains. These vibrations can then spread to the surrounding environment. A steel spring floating slab track may be used to control such vibrations, especially in metro-type urban railways. An experimental study was conducted to investigate the vibration-mitigating effects of the floating slab track in turnout areas, and the results were compared with the performance of a regular slab track. Four test cases (consisting of six test sections) were selected: a floating slab track in the turnout zone (consisting of a switch rail section and a nose rail section), a floating slab track in the plain line, a slab track in the turnout zone (consisting of a switch rail section and a nose rail section), and a slab track in the plain line. The vibration characteristics of the floating slab track in the plain line and in the turnout were calculated to explain the test results. The test results indicate that when trains pass across the floating slab track in the turnout zone, the vertical vibration response is close to the horizontal response on the switch rail sections. The use of floating slab track can effectively reduce this vertical vibration. However, the vertical vibration response is much larger than the horizontal response on the nose rail sections of the turnout zone. When the floating slab track is used in these turnout zones, the vertical vibration of the rail decreases while the horizontal vibration increases. Compared to sections using the regular slab track in the turnout zone, the vibration of the floating slab track segments in the turnout zone is shown to be exacerbated, although the vibration level at the adjacent tunnel wall is effectively reduced.

To effectively reduce the railway vibration and its environmental impact, vibration mitigation measures are increasingly used. The vibration reduction effect of railway tracks is described quantitatively by insertion loss (IL). ILs obtained from in situ measurements under moving train loads and laboratory tests under artificial excitation differ significantly due to the different track loading state between these two methods. The differences of track loading state are induced by the moving effect of train passages and the preloads effect of vehicle masses, the latter of which is a significant factor to discuss in this paper. In order to study the static preload by vehicle masses influence on the vibration reduction effect in isolated tracks, the steel spring floating slab track and regular slab track, as a reference case, were compared. First, a theoretical simplified model was constructed, following which a finite–infinite element coupled model was built, which was calibrated by experimental test results. Impact loads were applied to both tracks with preloads using unsprung wheelsets or sprung vehicle-body masses, with the total mass varying from 0 t to 30 t. The results demonstrate that the increase in preload of unsprung mass makes the natural frequencies further reduced, and the peak IL value increased from 39 dB to 48 dB. The increase in preload has a significant effect on vibration responses below 5 Hz, and the application of the preload has different effects on the reduction effect in different frequency ranges.

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