COMPARATIVE STUDY ON VARIATION OF NOISE LEVEL ON BALLASTED AND SLAB RAILWAY TRACK

Environmental Engineering

In conventional railway tracks, the tracks are supported by a bed of crushed stones. These stones are of varying sizes of 1.9cm to 5.1cm, known as ballast. The stone of size greater than 5.1cm is usually not preferred due to the poor interlocking property. This gave birth to the slab track system. In recent few decades concrete slab tracks are being constructed, considering its suitability for high speed trains. At the same time the slab tracks are considered noisier than the ballasted track. To study the characteristics features of noise radiation of ballasted and slab track, sound level verses varying distance from track such as 10m, 20m, 30m, 40m, 50m has been tabulated and it is found that the level of noise varied with the increasing distance from track. The slab track acting like a reflective surface for noise and radiate 1dB(A) to 3dB(A) more noise than the ballasted track. As in ballasted track system most of the noise is absorbed, diffused and the rest is reflected in the surroundings, thereby lesser level of noise is measured at same distance from track, although the speed of train was approximately same on both the tracks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.