Vibration & ground borne noise monitoring and evaluation of the performance of various antivibration measures at athens tramway

The Athens Tramway is a 48km light rail system that dramatically improves the access from the city centre to the coastal region, where many important "Athens 2004 Olympic installations" were constructed, as well as to the heart of the city centre. This paper describes the implementation and the evaluation of the performance of a simple and efficient low noise and vibration embedded track solution, using fastener-less PREFARAIL® technology for the new Tramway in Athens. The whole concept is based on a rail completely involved in an elastic jacket with special shape and adapted stiffness characteristics; the shape is designed to ensure rail deflections of max. 2 mm. under train passage (120 kN/axle) with high lateral stability (rail-roll in curves and seismic excitation). To meet the relevant N&V specifications & criteria, three types of track solutions were designed; with different track moduli. Noise and vibration measurements were carried out on three different Vibration & Ground borne Noise Mitigation Measures implemented at the new Athens Tramway The PREFARAIL-CLASSIC® & COMFORT® embedded track & CDM-DFMA-L10® + COMFORT special Floating slab-track vibration isolation solution were measured in a dense urban area at Kassomouli str. and the see front at Athens area. The aim of this measurement's campaign is to compare - for these three types of mitigation measures - the noise and vibrations levels during tram runs over these solutions