Ground-born vibration at multileveled train tunnel crossing

In recent railway projects where the railway connects between cities, newly planned tunnels are often located close to, or beneath an existing tunnel. Many claims and petitions have voiced public concern about the vibration and noise resulting from the situation. Vibrations and noises are engineering issues as well as environmental problems, and have become more important as people have become more concerned with their the quality of life. However, it is unlikely that the effects of vibration in situations where trains simultaneously pass a multileveled tunnel crossing have been appropriately considered in the phase of planning and design. This study investigates the superposition characteristic of ground-born vibrations from a multileveled tunnel crossing. The results from model tests and numerical analysis show that the ground-born vibration can be amplified by a maximum of about 30% compared to that resulting from the existing single tunnel. Numerical parametric study has also shown that the vibration amplification effect increases as the ground stiffness, the tunnel depth, and the distance between tunnels decrease.