The railway noise from conventional narrow-gauge lines in Japan mainly consists of rolling noise. A better understanding of wheel/rail noise is required to reduce the wayside noise of railways. In order to quantify wheel/rail noise, TWINS and other theoretical models have been developed. The TWINS model has been validated in terms of noise and vibration, and used to predict the rail and wheel contributions to the total noise. This paper validates the application of the TWINS model to Japanese railways. A comparison of the predicted and measured values of noise and vibration shows that the TWINS model is effective and reliable for the study of wheel/rail noise.

Copyright (c) 2004 Railway Technical Research Institute