Effects of railway noise and vibrations on sleep: experimental studies within the Swedish research program TVANE
2009 (English)In: 8th European Conference on Noise Control 2009 (EURONOISE 2009): Proceedings, Curran Associates, Inc., 2009, , p. 8p. 1214-1221Conference paper, Published paper (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
This paper describes a laboratory sleep study with an exposure situation corresponding to a dwelling close to a railway. Both noise and bed vibrations were generated for passing trains, and the sleep quality of the test subjects was evaluated using questionnaires before and after sleep. A total of 21 test subjects slept five nights in the laboratory, and three different exposure situations were presented in a randomized order after two nights for habituation. The three exposures were combined from two noise levels and two vibration amplitudes; one with high noise levels and strong vibrations, one with lower noise levels and strong vibrations and one with high noise levels and weaker vibrations. The results indicate that the perceived sleep disturbance from noise increased with increasing vibration amplitude. There was no such interaction effect for perceived sleep disturbance due to vibrations, i.e. sleep disturbance due to vibrations was the same irrespective of noise level. These results suggest that it will not be sufficient to reduce the noise levels to protect from sleep disturbances, e.g. by sound insulating windows and noise barriers, if vibration levels are high. The vibration levels must also be addressed.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Curran Associates, Inc., 2009. , p. 8p. 1214-1221
Series
Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics Volume 31 Pt.3 ; Volume 31 Pt.3
Keywords [en]
Noise, Noise level, Vibration, Impact study, Sleep, Exposure (human), Perception, Laboratory (not an organization), Test, Questionnaire, Rail traffic
National Category
Infrastructure Engineering
Research subject
Railway: General works, surveys, comprehensive works, Railway: Environment
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:vti:diva-5345ISBN: 9781615676804 (print)Archive number: TRV 2010/23572OAI: oai:DiVA.org:vti-5345DiVA, id: diva2:674178
Conference
8th European Conference on Noise Control 2009 (EURONOISE 2009), 26-28 October 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2013-12-032013-12-032022-10-27Bibliographically approved