Efficiency of heavy mass technology in traffic vibration reduction: Experimental and numerical investigation

Vibrations induced by traffic and construction activities cause serious environmental problems. The reduction of the impact of these vibrations on the nearby environment constitutes an important challenge, mainly in urban area. This paper presents both experimental investigation and 3D numerical modeling of the performance of heavy masses technology for scattering the ground vibrations. The efficiency of this method is compared to that of the trench barriers, largely studied in the literature. Analyses show that the heavy mass constitutes an efficient technology for the attenuation of the traffic induced vibrations. The performance of this method depends mainly on the mass weight. An amplitude reduction ratio up to 70% can be reached using this technology.