Prediction of Rail-Wheel Noise from High Speed Trains

The noise radiated by high speed railway trains is generated predominantly by the vibration of the rails and the wheels and a close relationship has been observed experimentally between vehicle speed and rail-wheel noise levels measured on the dBA scale. This relationship has been incorporated in a simple acoustic model of a train and the model used to predict the peak noise levels experienced during the passage of conventional British Railway stock. The predictions have shown a 95% probabality of being within 5 dB of observed results; the predictive method is to be used as part of a larger model for the prediction of community noise reaction.