Skirts and barriers for reduction of wayside noise from railway vehicles—an experimental investigation with application to the BR185 locomotive

An experimental investigation to determine the noise reduction efficiency of a number of combinations of vehicle mounted noise skirts and trackside low barriers has been carried out. A 1:4-scale mock-up of the German BR185 locomotive was built. Special care was taken to achieve a realistic representation of the wheel/rail sources, using rotating acoustic source wheels able to imitate the radiation from structural modes and acoustic rail ducts with independently adjustable vertical and lateral slots. The acoustic insertion loss (IL) equivalent to a full-scale microphone position at 25 m distance from the track was determined for the different source components separately. The total IL was obtained from sound power spectra calculated with the TWINS software. Results for the design speed (v=120 km/h) and a case with a lower speed (v=100 km/h) are presented to illustrate the effect of speed on the acoustic IL. The tests were performed in open-air free field conditions. The experimental procedure used in the present investigation gives detailed information on the relative contributions from different source components, which is valuable for further design studies. For the eight combinations reported here, the overall reduction achieved was in agreement with results in the literature. The IL was 2–3 dB(A) for cases with only vehicle skirts and the case with only low track barriers. The combined configurations had insertion losses of 7–13 dB(A).