Proceedings home preface contents authors keywords copyright reference ©2012 Civil-Comp Ltd				Paper 176 The Design of Rail Tracks including the Influence of Vibration on People in Buildings J. Kawecki, K. Koziol and K. Stypula Institute of Structural Mechanics, Cracow University of Technology, Poland Keywords: vibrations, railway, transport, influence on people, vibroinsulation. full paper (pdf) - reference The present work concerns the situation where the proposed (or modernised) rail transport lines (railway, tramway, or subway) will be located near buildings. Future operation of trains will generate vibrations, into the ground which will be transferred to the foundations of adjacent buildings. The movement of the foundation is kinematic excitation of the building and causes additional dynamic forces to arise, loading the building structure. During the design of vibro-insulation in the structure of the railway route it proves that the influence of vibrations on people in these buildings plays a decisive role. This results from the fact that the perception threshold of vibrations by people in buildings is considerably lower than the vibration level which may have a significant influence on the building structure [1,2]. Therefore the application of vibro-insulation should be preceded by dynamic calculations (numerical simulation) confirming the efficiency of the chosen vibro-insulation method. For this purpose simulation calculations of the vibrations of the building, predicted after execution vibro-insulation and then the assessment of the influence of these vibrations on the building structure and people residing inside is performed. The efficiency of vibro-insulation is conditioned by the fulfillment of assumed criteria in the range of the vibration influence on people for example the assumption of the reduction of the level of influence below the human perception threshold. The basis for simulation calculations are the time traces of the vibrations from measurements and material data given by the producer of the vibro-insulating material and enclosing among other values: the elastic modulus (static and dynamic), shear modulus, Poison's ratio and vibration damping in particular frequency bands. Calculation of the vibro-insulation of the track taking into account the forecast the impact of the vibration on people in buildings were made by the authors for a section of the metro in Warsaw. The design procedure is shown in the example of the building (at a distance 31.5 m from the metro tunnel) in which it was necessary to reduce the level of impact on people of the vibrations generated by the metro. In the case of building or modernisation of rail transport line located close to buildings, assessment of the vibration influence on people in these buildings should be the measure of efficiency of the designed vibro-insulation. Making use of simulation calculations in designing solutions for vibro-insulation of the rail track permits the required efficiency of vibro-insulation to be obtained. References 1 K. Stypula, K. Koziol, "Effects of changes to the track superstructure on human perception of rail-induced vibrations in a selected building near the rail tunnel in Warsaw - predictions and measurements", Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2008, Southampton, 58, 2008. 2 ISO 10131:2007, "Bases for design of structures - Serviceability of buildings and walkways against vibrations", 2007.