The influence of a rail embankment on the vibrations generated by moving trains

High-speed trains can generate strong vibrations that propagate away from the track. In this paper, an efficient method is presented to calculate the displacements generated by a train moving over an embankment. It is based on a domain-type integral equation which is solved numerically with the use of slowness-domain techniques. By expressing the field in terms of reflection and transmission properties of the layers, the effects of stratification of the embedding medium are taken into account. The results are compared to actual measurements and agree qualitatively.