Life cycle assessment of ground borne vibration mitigation strategies using subgrade stiffening, soft-filled barriers and open trenches

This paper focuses on the financial effectiveness of vibration mitigation measures in urban environments. It highlights the comparison among new methods using subgrade stiffening, open trenches, and soft-filled barriers for mitigating ground-borne vibrations, which are often observed along railway corridors. The excessive ground-borne vibration can cause structural damage of safety-critical track components and surrounding infrastructures. In many cases, the neighboring assets such as buildings, tunnels, and so on are affected by railway ground-borne vibrations. This level of vibration can sometimes cause not only nuisance but also structural damages to the assets. Therefore, this paper is devoted to systems thinking approach and life cycle assessment in resolving railway crossing vibration problems. The life cycle of fifty years has been selected, as it is coincide with the majority of common design life for railway tracks catering freights, heavy haul trains, mixed traffics and heavy suburban trains globally. Based on assumptions commonly derived in rail industry, the life cycle analyses under variant extreme weather conditions reveal that using subgrade stiffening method seems to be the most efficient method for mitigating vibroacoustic problems, whilst the noise barrier seems to be the worst counterpart in railway corridor.