A transfer function method to predict building vibration and its application to railway defects

• Published in: Construction & building materials 2020-01, Vol.232, p.117217, Article 117217
• Main Authors: López-Mendoza, D., Connolly, D.P., Romero, A., Kouroussis, G., Galvín, P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Building vibrations; Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA); Ground-borne vibrations; High speed rail; Railway singular defects; Railway traffic; Structural vibration
• ISSN: 0950-0618; 1879-0526
• DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.117217

•Simplified method to evaluate building shaking due to arbitrary base excitations.•Soil-structure transfer functions combined with free-field response are used to estimate building vibration.•The newly proposed approach obtains the result instantly.•The method can be used to estimate the vibration in buildings, accounting for SSI and floor amplification.•Local track defects are shown to have a strong influence on building vibrations. This work presents a simplified method to evaluate building shaking due to arbitrary base excitations, and an example application to railway problems. The model requires minimal computational effort and can be applied to a wide range of footing shapes, thus making it attractive for scoping-type analysis. It uses the soil excitation spectrum at the building footing location as it’s input, and computes the building response at any arbitrary location within it’s 3D structure. To show an application of the model versatility, it is used to compute building response due to a variety of singular railway defects (e.g. switches/crossings). It is however suitable for more general applications including railway problems without defects. The approach is novel because current railway scoping models do not use soil-structure transfer functions combined with free-field response to estimate building vibration by railway defects. First the soil-structure interaction approach is outlined for both rigid and flexible footings. Then it is validated by comparing results against a comprehensive fully-coupled 3D FEM-BEM model. Finally, it is used to analyse the effect of a variety of variables related to railway defects on building response. Local track defects are shown to have a strong influence on building vibrations. Further, vibration levels close to the threshold of human comfort are found in buildings close to the railway line. Overall the new approach allows for the computation of building vibrations accounting for soil-structure interaction, floor amplification and the measured/computed free-field response due to railway traffic using minimal computational effort.