Specific aspects of the rail vehicle pass-by noise measurement

Abstract

Actual European legislative (NOI TSI) urges for quitter rail vehicles requiring obligatory assessment of noise emitted by rail vehicles within vehicle approval procedure. After survey of different rail vehicle noise emission scenarios, this paper discusses more in detail specifics of the pass-by noise measurement. The requirements of the measurement procedure from applicable standards are presented and discussed on the example of the tank wagon pass-by tests. Under several parameters that can influence measurement, for vehicle approval is important to measure and check if the most influencing parameters related to track lies in specified limits. If so, the measured noise emission level mainly represents the vehicle contribution and allows comparability to noise emission measurement of other vehicles. Two main track characteristics have to be measured and assessed: acoustical rail roughness and track decay rate. In the paper are presented both measurements that are more demanding than the noise emission measurement itself.