Research on Noise Reduction Performance of Wheel–Rail with Amplitude Amplifying Vibration Absorber

This paper introduces a novel rail vibration absorber leveraging the amplitude amplification mechanism. Employing a continuous slab ballastless track as the experimental framework, we develop a predictive model for rail sound radiation considering various absorber configurations. Additionally, we analyze the efficacy of the amplitude-amplifying vibration absorber in mitigating wheel–rail radiated noise. Our findings demonstrate that the amplitude-amplifying vibration absorber significantly reduces rail radiation noise within the frequency band of 800–1Formula: see text600Formula: see textHz. Specifically, close to the design frequency (1Formula: see text000Formula: see textHz), the sound power level experiences a reduction of 15.34Formula: see textdB, leading to a total reduction in rail radiation sound power by 3.21Formula: see textdB. Comparative analysis reveals that both the frequency band and noise reduction effect of the amplitude amplifying vibration absorber outperform those of conventional sound radiation absorbers with identical parameters. Moreover, they surpass the performance of conventional vibration absorbers with similar parameters. This study substantiates the superior noise reduction capabilities of the amplitude-amplifying (AA) vibration absorber compared to conventional counterparts.