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The University of Southampton
Engineering

Research project: Railway damping technologies - Dormant

Currently Active:
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Simplified methods to assess the effectiveness of wheel and rail dampers.

Software developed by ISVR for wheel and rail damper assessment
Software interface

Shifting more traffic to rail and increasing rail's market share can only be achieved with sustainable noise and vibration mitigation measures.

Rolling noise is the dominant source of noise during normal operations; in recent years various damping solutions have been developed and ISVR has been a leading figure in their early stage research and development, in particular for rail dampers. Once these technologies are adopted in-situ an assessment of their effectiveness is required but this involves expensive field tests. A further drawback of this is that the results are not readily transferable from the measurement situation to another.

To propose a solution a project was started within the Deufrako consortium. It was named STARDAMP (Standardisation of damping technologies for the reduction of railway noise) and was born with the objective of developing test methods that could be used in the laboratory to assess rail and wheel dampers. In order to interpret the results a prediction method was required and it was decided to have it in the form of an easy-to-use software.

University of Southampton’s test track allows filed measurement of dampers behaviour.
Southampton's test track
The method developed allows testing damping on finite rail length in laboratory.
Laboratory vibration tests

Associated research themes

Acoustics

Structures and solid mechanics

Related research groups

Dynamics Group
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