Exposure‐response relationships from railway noise in the presence of vibration

Koziel, Z

Abstract

The main aim of this thesis is to develop exposure-response relationships for noise, vibration, and combined effects from noise and vibration. Examinations of non-acoustical factors such as noise sensitivity, noise acceptance, gender, age, and sleep disturbance are also performed in this project. Many studies have previously been conducted to investigate community response to transportation noise in residential areas. Comparatively few studies have investigated community response to vibration exposure, and fewer still the combined effects of noise and vibration. This study of exposure-response relationships for noise and vibration therefore presents a potentially significant need contribution for the problems of these kinds.
This work was performed as part of the Defra funded project “NANR209: Human response to vibration in residential environments” which was conducted between January 2008 and March 2011. The database for the project was obtained by undertaking a social survey questionnaire along with measurements of vibration. The project addressed railway, construction and internal sources of vibration. This thesis concerns railway exposure for which the database contains 931 cases. The face to face interviews took place within participants’ dwellings. In 542 properties out of 931, internal vibration was recorded and calculated utilizing a number of vibration indices, two of which are VDVb,24h and RMS Wk. Vibration exposure has been predicted for the remaining cases. Noise exposure in the form of Lden has been calculated for 843 out of 931 cases using the Calculation of Railway Noise procedure (Department of Transport, 1995). It has been estimated that maximal error that can be expected from prediction in this thesis is equal to ±10 dB(A) at the 95% confidence level. On the other hand, maximal error that can be expected from vibration measurements is equal to ±2.2 dB or ±6.2 dB, with regard to “internal measurements” and “no measurements”, respectively.
It is concluded from analyses of combined effects that noise and vibration additively contribute to the proportion of people reporting little, moderate, and high annoyance from exposure to railway noise in the presence of vibration. [Work funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) UK]

Citation

Koziel, Z. Exposure‐response relationships from railway noise in the presence of vibration. (Dissertation). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Dissertation
• Deposit Date: May 16, 2012
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Keywords: environmental noise, acoustics, noise, vibration, exposure, exposure-response relationship, annoyance, railway, train
• Additional Information: Projects : NANR209: "Human response to vibration in residential environments"
• Award Date: May 7, 2012