Influence of static preload on vibration reduction effect of floating slab tracks

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.