Fatigue Tests on Noise-Barrier Walls

Noise-barrier walls along high-speed railroad lines are subject to aerodynamic excitations caused by alternating over-pressure and under-pressure loads induced by passing trains. On new sections of the Westbahn railroad line in Austria, now under construction between Vienna and Salzburg, it is intended that trains will run at up to 250 km/hour in the future. This article describes research in which numeric computations and dynamic in-situ measurements were carried out in order to determine how long the service life of the noise-barrier walls will be on the new Westbahn railroad line in Austria.