TRANSMISSION OF STRUCTURE-BORNE SOUND IN BUILDINGS ABOVE RAILWAYS

This paper deals with transmission of structure-borne sound in buildings in a special case: the sound is assumed to originate from railway traffic and to be transmitted through rock to a building which is built directly on rock. It is shown that in such situations a major part of the transmission in the building is governed by the in-plane waves of the load-bearing structure. This implies that the level decreases comparatively slowly upwards in the buildings; the decrease in a building with load-bearing walls of concrete is generally in the region of 1 or 2 dB per storey. A simple formula, based on the 'Ketten-Leiter' theory, is proposed for estimates.