ICSV16, Kraków, Poland, 5-9 July 2009 1 CATDBTREN PROJECT: NEW PREDICTION TOOL OF VIBRATION IMPACT FOR RAILWAY INFRASTRUC- TURES Jordi Romeu, Andreu Balastegui, Robert Arcos, Ángel Sánchez Acoustic and Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering Department, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Colom 11, 08222 Terrassa, Spain e-mail: jordi.romeu@upc.edu J. Ignacio Palacios, Gabriel Alarcón SENER Ingeniería y Sistemas, 392 Provença St., 08025, Barcelona, Spain email: jignacio.palacios@sener.es A model to calculate the vibration impact is presented. Due to the complexity of the phenom- ena, the model has been divided in different calculation stages, according to the different physical processes of generation, propagation and transmission to the building. The result is obtained after the compilation of different partial results which, however, are related with each other. 1. Introduction The generation of vibrations induced by trains, their propagation through the soil and their transmission into the building is a complex phenomenon because of the great number of parameters which are involved and the difficulty to know them all. For example, the behaviour of the vibration source, soil and track properties, building data and the interaction between all the stages (rolling stock, track, soil and building) 1,2 . Different methodologies have been proposed in order to predict vibration levels caused by induced train vibrations: • Empirical methods: some empirical models can be found in bibliography 3 , some of them are even used as a national reference calculation method in countries like Switzerland 4 , Nordic Coun- tries 5 or United States 6 . Models are usually based in some reference values of vibration level which can be modified depending on some characteristics of the elements involved in the calculation. The bases of the values are often obtained from statistical analysis of several measurement campaigns. • Analytical methods: several theoretical approximations to the problem can be found in bib- liography 7-9 . Their main shortcoming is that they usually can be only applied to one case, because every kind of track needs its own analytical model. Moreover, they are not very easily applicable at engineering level, with low data available. • Numerical methods: based on Finite Element Method (FEM) or its combination with Boundary Element Method (BEM). Generally speaking, numerical methods can give good results but the lack of information about the vibration source and the material properties give also uncer-