TRACK DESIGN TO CONTROL RAILWAY INDUCED

GROUNDBORNE NOISE AND VIBRATION FROM THE UK’S

CROSSRAIL PROJECT
Oliver Bewes, Richard Greer and Josette Webb
ARUP – 13 Fitzroy Street, London, W1T 4BQ, England
email: oliver.bewes@arup.com

Colin Cobbing
Crossrail
email: colincobbing@crossrail.co.uk

Crossrail is Europe’s biggest construction project and will deliver a major new east-west railway
under London. Construction of Crossrail commenced in 2009 and tunnelling was completed in
2015. Services will operate in central London from 2018. Without mitigation groundborne noise
and vibration generated by operational trains has the potential to disturb occupants of existing
buildings above the tunnels. As a result, operational groundborne noise and vibration have been
an important consideration throughout the planning, design and construction phases of Crossrail.
Groundborne noise and vibration can be controlled through the design of low vibration track sys-
tems by incorporating resilient elements in the track and ensuring the running surfaces of the rails
are smooth. Crossrail has committed to install and maintain low vibration track throughout its
tunnels to minimise the impact of the railway on existing buildings. This paper describes the
project’s commitments, the evaluative criteria adopted for the assessment of groundborne noise
and vibration, the steps taken to predict groundborne noise from operational trains, and the design
process. The final design for the track is presented. The track, which is currently being installed
in the tunnels, includes around 40 km of resilient booted sleeper track and 3 km of floating slab
track.

1. Introduction
Crossrail, to be called the Elizabeth line when services start, links 40 stations over 118 kilometres,
from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. The new railway
consists of the construction of 21 kilometres of new twin-bore tunnels, 10 new stations, improvements
to 30 more and upgrades to existing rail infrastructure. The trains will be the new Bombardier Class
345, which will be over 200 metres long and able to carry 1,500 people. A total funding package of
£14.8 billion has been made available for the delivery of Crossrail. The central section of Crossrail
(to which this paper refers) involves the provision of significant lengths of tunnelled railway across
London (Fig.1). Crossrail operation will provide a metro style service, with a train passing approxi-
mately every 6 minutes in each direction, between 0600hours and 0030hours in the central section.

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Central section bored tunnels

Figure 1: Schematic showing the Crossrail route.

The project has groundborne noise and vibration commitments, which are intended to minimise
the adverse effects on occupiers and users of the significant number of buildings above the tunnels
which may arise from groundborne noise and vibration generated by train services. At the detailed
design stage the primary means of controlling groundborne noise and vibration from the operation of
new tunnelled railways is through the selection and design t of vibration isolating track systems.

1.1 Timeline
The Environmental Statement for Crossrail was submitted in 2005. Powers to build Crossrail were
sought via the Hybrid Bill process. The Crossrail Hybrid Bill application to UK parliament was made
in 2005, with enablement of the Bill to The Crossrail Act 2008, giving powers for the construction of
Crossrail. During the passage of the Crossrail Bill through parliament a series of environmental re-
quirements and assurances were negotiated and agreed with a number of different beneficiaries in-
cluding local authorities, statutory agencies, residents and businesses, which any organisation ap-
pointed by the Secretary of State to carry out the works must comply with when building of the
railway. These are collectively referred to as commitments within this paper.
In June 2009 The Arup Atkins Design Team were appointed to undertake the detailed design of
the permanent track system as part of the route wide design of the Crossrail bored tunnels. From that
date to the appointment of the contractor who would build the track, the designers were responsible
for ensuring that the design could satisfy the project’s commitments relating to groundborne noise
and vibration from the operational railway.

2. Crossrail’s commitments
2.1 Route-wide commitments
The key document containing the route-wide requirements relating to groundborne noise and vi-
bration from the tunnelled sections of the railway is the Crossrail Information Paper (IP) D10 Ground-
borne Noise and Vibration [1]. IPD10 includes numerical design criteria and requirements for the
design process of the track system in the tunnels.
Table 1 of IPD10, which sets out the design criteria for groundborne noise, is reproduced below.
The nominated undertaker is required to design the permanent track system in the tunnels so that the
level of groundborne noise arising from Crossrail near the centre of any noise-sensitive room is pre-
dicted in all reasonably foreseeable circumstances not to exceed the levels in Table 1.

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Table 1: Operational groundborne noise criteria (reproduced from IPD10).

Building Level/Measure
Residential buildings, Offices, Hotels, Schools, Colleges, Hospitals, Labora- 40dB LAmax,S
tories, Libraries
Theatres 25dB LAmax,S
Large Auditoria/Concert Halls 25dB LAmax,S
Sound recording studios 30dB LAmax,S
Courts, Lecture theatres, Places of meeting for religious worship, Small Audi- 35dB LAmax,S
toria/halls

IPD10 also includes other measures to which the project has committed to reduce groundborne
noise. These include:
• the use of continuously welded rail (CWR) throughout the tunnels where practicable;
• specification of a maximum combined wheel/rail roughness level;
• the conditioning of rails prior to opening and during the operational life of Crossrail to maintain
the specified wheel/rail roughness level.
The key measure which is relevant to this paper is that which requires the project “to design a
standard trackform for the tunnel section with the objective of meeting as many of those design cri-
teria as can reasonably be achieved by such a standard track system and to design an enhanced
trackform, such as floating slab or alternative better technology, for locations where it is predicted
that the standard track system will not meet the criteria or to discharge other project commitments
and undertakings”.
IPD10 also requires that additional mitigation measures should be adopted that will further reduce
any adverse environmental impacts at residential properties, where the groundborne noise would oth-
erwise equal or exceed 35dB LAmax,S. This is a more onerous design criterion than in Table 1 of IPD10.
However, the requirement is qualified in that “reasonable endeavours” should be used to provide
mitigation, rather than requiring compliance with the requirements in “all reasonably foreseeable
circumstances. Mitigation should be provided where “these mitigation measures do not add unrea-
sonable costs to the project” or “unreasonable delays to the construction programme.” The impli-
cations of these requirements on the lengths of the enhanced track systems required are set out later
in this paper.
IDP10 identifies that the method for demonstrating compliance with the requirements is by design,
not measurement after the opening of the railway. Predictions used in the demonstration of compli-
ance must be carried out using a model complaint with BS ISO 14837-1: 2005 [2].

2.2 Specific commitments

As well as the route-wide commitments a number of specific commitments were made to protect
particular areas or facilities. For example, a specific commitment was given to protect the recording
industry based in Soho. The “Soho Undertaking” (Commitment 437) covers the area between the
extent of the railway between Regent Street and Charing Cross Road. Another commitment was
given to preserve the acoustic conditions in the Barbican Concert Hall (Commitment 489).

3. Prediction of groundborne noise

A model for predicting groundborne noise and vibration from the operational railway is central to
the IPD10 design process and was required to determine the type of track system required at each
location along the lengths of the tunnels. A proven prediction model was taken as the starting point,
and extended as explained below. The modelling was carried out using the calculation procedures
developed for High Speed 1 in the UK (HS1) [3]. Since their development the procedures have been
implemented and further validated on a wide range of railways worldwide (Fig. 2.).

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The procedures are empirical methods developed from analytical principles, and were validated
with regression analysis between well-defined source terms for vibration and measured levels of
groundborne noise inside dwellings close to sections of existing railway. Development of the predic-
tion method specifically for the Crossrail project enabled its application to the various types of noise
sensitive property along the length of Crossrail. The HS1 method includes a term for the transfer
function between vibration at the foundation and groundborne noise within a residential dwelling.
For Crossrail, additional transfer functions were included for different types of buildings and foun-
dations, using data from [4]. The estimated 95%ile confidence limits for a groundborne noise predic-
tion made using the HS1 procedures is +8dB. On this basis a conservative +10 dB allowance for
prediction uncertainty was added to all predictions to demonstrate that the design criteria would be
met in all reasonably foreseeable circumstances inside all the noise sensitive receptors located above
the tunnels.
To demonstrate that the project’s track systems would provide sufficient mitigation to meet the
project’s commitments the acoustic performance of the proposed systems was modelled using the
Arup Track Acoustics Model (ATAM). ATAM is a finite element model of a track which represents
the train-track system as a series of masses, beams and springs.
The procedures described above were linked to Crossrail’s Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) and buildings database to provide the design information needed, and to support rapid assess-
ment of different track options at the 400 buildings above the tunnels.

Figure 2: Accuracy of the HS1 method for predicting groundborne noise. The datasets include measurements
from London Underground, UK; Deutsche Bahn ICE trains in Germany; SNCF TGVs in France, intercity
trains on the East Coast Mainline (ECML) in the UK; Metropolitan Rapid Transit (MRT), Singapore; Man-
chester MetroLink; Tangara Trains, Sydney, Australia; and measurements made above the HS1 tunnels, UK.

4. Crossrail track designs

The Crossrail acoustic design process and commitments have led to four types of track system.
The choice of track system for a given location was determined by the degree of groundborne noise

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reduction that was needed, the practicalities of installing a given type of track in that location, and
reliability, maintainability and safety considerations.
As explained in Section 2.1, the commitments required that a track system be used to comply with
as many of the required groundborne noise and vibration design criteria as practical. In order to
achieve this, the Environmental Statement assumed a highly resilient track form throughout the tun-
nels. A number of railway requirements affected the final choice of track design, including the need
for key track components such as resilient elements and concrete bearers to have a design life of 50
years. The standard track had to be installed at a particular rate, to enable the construction programme
to be met so that the railway can open on time. Further, because of the long operating hours of the
system, maintenance hours will be very limited, meaning that any rail or track component replace-
ment must be capable of being carried out quickly.

4.1 Standard Track System - Sateba 312 CTRL V S3

The design for the standard track is the Sateba 312 CTRL V S3. The Sateba system was specified
where, following groundborne noise modelling, an enhanced track system was not required to meet
IPD10 or to fulfil other specific commitments. The system comprises a precast concrete bi-block
supported on resilient pads encased in rigid plastic hulls (Fig. 3.). Resilience in the vertical plane is
provided by an elastomeric soffit pad, with a dynamic stiffness of 10MN/m per block, which sits
between the hull and the concrete block. To reduce the transmission of vibration between the sides of
the block and hull, six resilient pads provide resilience in the lateral plane. The pads are ribbed so
that the vertical dynamic stiffness of the system is maintained under high lateral axle loading.

Figure 3: Indicative cross section of the Sateba 312 CTRL V S3 track system.

4.2 Sateba High Attenuation System

The Sateba High Attenuation System (HAS) was incorporated into the design where a greater level
of groundborne noise reduction was required or to meet other specific commitments. Crossrail will
be the first in-service use of the HAS system. The decision to use it on Crossrail was subject to a
number of approvals through the project assurance system. As well as its greater level of perfor-
mance, HAS is also advantageous because it can be laid at comparable rates to other track systems
such as the Sateba 312 V S3 system. HAS is a resiliently supported, booted, mono-block slab track
system (Fig. 4.). The HAS is a mono-block weighing 420kg encased in a rigid plastic hull, with the
hull supported by cast in-situ second stage concrete. Resilience in the vertical plane is provided by
two elastomeric soffit pads, with a dynamic stiffness of 8MN/m per pad. The pads sit between the
hull and the mono-block. To reduce the transmission of vibration between the sides of the mono-
block and hull, six pads provide resilience in the lateral plane. The pads are ribbed so that the vertical
dynamic stiffness of the system is maintained under high lateral axle loading.

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Figure 4: Indicative cross section of the Sateba HAS track system.

4.3 Soho Track System

The system adopted for the Soho area is a concrete slab supported on elastomeric bearings as shown
in Fig. 5. This is the system proposed to meet Commitment 437 (Described in Section 2.2). The
rails are supported by baseplates with a dynamic stiffness of 20-30MN/m per rail seat at 650mm
centres. The rail supports are directly fastened to a floating slab with a mass of approximately
3500kg per m of track. The slab is supported on the tunnel invert concrete layer by discrete elasto-
meric bearings with an equivalent dynamic stiffness of 11.1MN/m per m of track. The reinforced
concrete slabs were designed with access chambers that allow installation and inspection of the
elastomeric bearings.

Figure 5: An indicative cross-section of the Engineer’s Design Enhanced Track System.

4.4 Barbican Track System

The design was developed in response to Commitment 487 which specifies a minimum slab mass
of 2875 kg/m and a maximum unloaded fundamental natural frequency of 7.9 Hz. The specification
led to the use of steel springs, which can be designed to provide a lower natural frequency than elas-
tomeric bearings whilst meeting other design constraints. In the final design (Fig. 6.) the rails are
supported by baseplates with a dynamic stiffness of 20-30MN/m per rail seat at 650mm centres. The
rail supports are directly fastened to a floating slab with a mass of approximately 5600kg per m of
track. The slab is supported on the tunnel invert concrete layer by discrete steel springs with an equiv-
alent dynamic stiffness of 10.1MN/m per m of track.

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Figure 6: Indicative cross-section FST-Barbican track system.

4.5 Relative performance of project track systems

Figure 7 presents the insertion gains of Crossrails track systems relative to a rigid reference track.
The insertion gains have been calculated using the ATAM software. The insertion gain is a measure
of the attenuation and amplification, of vibration transmission to the ground relative to a rigid refer-
ence track. The frequency where the loaded track frequency occurs (the peak in the curves) is an
indicator of the acoustic performance of the track system. The lower the loaded track frequency the
greater the isolation at higher frequencies, and the lower the level of groundborne noise.
It can be seen that, above the loaded track frequency, the HAS track systems provides more atten-
uation of groundborne vibration than the Sateba 312 CTRL V S3. Because of the greater mass and
low stiffness slab supports, the Soho and Barbican track systems are predicted to provide a high
groundborne noise reduction compared to the Sateba systems.
20
Insertion gain dB re highly stiff

10
Amplification
0
track system

Attenuation
-10

-20

-30

-40
6.3 8 10 12.5 16 20 25 31.5 40 50 63 80 100 125 160 200 250
One-third octave band frequency Hz

Figure 7: Indicative insertion gains of track systems predicted using the ATAM software. Sateba 312 CTRL
V S3 (▬), Sateba HAS (), Soho track system (), Barbican track system (×).

5. Conclusions
The track forms in Crossrail’s central section tunnels have been designed to meet the project com-
mitments relating to ground borne noise and vibration using proven models. These were an empirical
prediction method for ground borne noise and vibration, and a finite element model for predicting the
acoustic performance of the track. A conservative allowance of +10dB has been incorporated into the

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predictions to account for uncertainty so that the design criteria would be met in all reasonably fore-
seeable circumstances inside all the noise sensitive receptors located above the tunnels.
The final design of the track in the central section tunnels consists of 37.8 km of the Sateba 312
CTRL V S3 booted sleeper system, 2.9 km of the Sateba High Attenuation System, 2 km of floating
slab track with resilient bearings and 1.3 km of floating slab track spring isolators.
The track designs are predicted to achieve the more onerous design requirement to of 35dB LAmax,S
at all residential properties located above the tunnels without imposing unreasonable costs or delays
to the project. At the time of writing approximately 25 percent of the track has been installed and is
programmed to be completed by the end of 2016. Crossrail is due to open in December 2018.

REFERENCES
1 Crossrail Information Paper D10 – Ground-borne noise and vibration. Version 4. April 2008.
2 BS ISO 14837: Mechanical vibration — Groundborne noise and vibration arising from rail sys-
tems: Part 1: General guidance (2009)
3 Greer R, J., Methods for Predicting Groundborne Noise and Vibration from Trains in Tunnels.
Proceedings of the Local Authority Rail Impact Forum (1999)
4 Nelson, P.M Ed., Transportation Noise Reference Book, Butterworth (1987)

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