Residential vibration exposure from railway traffic in Sweden

Paper in proceeding, 2016

Ground borne vibrations generated by train passages cause annoyance and sleep disturbance when the vibration velocity is too high in dwellings close to railway lines. In order to estimate how many people that are exposed to certain vibration velocities from railway traffic in Sweden, data almost 3 000 measurements of vibration have been used and classified according to geology at the receiving building and at the point on the railway line closest to the receiver. For 7 classes of geology the measurement results at the building foundation was used to estimate a simplified mathematical model, and by using 575 measurements of responses from foundation to indoor vibration velocity the weighted indoor levels could be predicted. Based on geological maps and a database of all properties close to railways the total number of exposed individuals in Sweden could be estimated. The results show that approximately 14 000 people are exposed to an rms-weighted maximum vibration velocity of 1.0 mm/s in their home in Sweden, which is about 65 percent higher than previous estimates.