Vibration Control Systems for Trackbeds and Buildings Using Coil Steel Springs

In congested cities the number of railway lines has rapidly increased. The close vicinity of rail tracks to buildings often gives rise to conflict in respect of the transmission of noise and vibration to people or sensitive equipment. Vibration attenuation can be safely achieved by well designed vibration control systems applied preferably to the source but also to the receiver. In both cases, the installation of an elastic interface effectively reduces the transmission of vibration. Here, the support of either the rail track or the building on coil steel springs has proved to be a highly-effective and reliable measure. The paper deals, at the beginning, with the description of some floating slab variants based on different steel spring elements. Then some examples of elastically supported buildings are shown. The paper refers to layout and design as well as to installation and construction features and considers the efficiency achievable by these measures.