Numerical simulation of impact noise generated at the railway insulated joint

This paper presents a full finite element (FE) model of wheel-track interaction to study the wheel-rail impact noise excited by an insulated joint (IJ). The integration is performed in the time domain with an explicit central difference scheme. The vibratory behaviour of the track and wheel model are respectively validated with hammer test and Axle Box Acceleration (ABA) measurement. By making use of the calculated velocities and pressures on the vibrating surfaces, the boundary element method (BEM) based on Helmholtz equation is adopted to transform the vibrations of the wheel-track into acoustic signals. The decay rate of impact noise at different frequency bands during propagation are analysed. The predictions of total impact noise radiation and the noise contributions of different track components are in good agreement with results reported in the literature, while the effective frequency range is successfully extended from 5 kHz to 10 kHz.