Acoustical contribution analysis of railway wheels and tracks

In a numerical analysis the contribution of different railway wheels and the track on the sound power and the sound pressure was determined. Two different wheels under different loads and positions were compared. In a first step a unit mechanical excitation in the connection point between the wheel and the rail was used to analyze the structural displacements of each configuration with finite elements. The structural energy on the surface of the wheel and the rail was used to select critical frequencies using boundary elements. In a second step the sound pressure was displayed on visualization planes and the contributions of the wheel and the rail to the sound power and the pressure at different points were discussed for the critical frequencies. It could be shown that the main sound pressure was dominated by the wheel. The bending modes of the wheel contribute a lot to the sound pressure. For optimized wheels the bending stiffness should be therefore increased. The position of the wheel—over the sleeper ...