Soil vibration and auralisation software tools for application in railways

The main objective of the SILVARSTAR Shift2Rail project is to develop validated software tools for application in the field of ground vibration and auralisation in the railway sector. The first project work stream focuses on the prediction of ground vibration through the development and validation of a hybrid approach, combining numerical prediction with experimental results. The general framework adopted expresses the vibration level in a building as the product of terms describing the source, the propagation through the soil and the receiver. For each term, a database of both measured and pre-computed data is provided, allowing rapid calculations to be performed. In the upcoming project phase, this ground vibration software will be integrated in an industrial noise mapping software (IMMI). This will result in a unique software platform that will allow engineers to perform noise and vibration environmental impact studies within the same software environment, on a large scale. In the second work stream, auralisation and Virtual Reality (VR) software tools are developed based on physical models to synthesise railway noise in high quality. The novel auralisation and VR tools enable perception-based evaluation of noise mitigation technologies and an effective demonstration of different noise scenarios, including noise mitigation measures and vehicle design variants. This will support decision-making and facilitate communication with stakeholders through VR prior to project delivery. The new software tools will be made available to the industry at the end of 2022.