These guidelines have been prepared by a Working Group of the UK Association of Noise Consultants and cover various groundbourne noise and vibration issues. In particular, vibration caused by the operation of railways is dealt with in some depth and difficulties in the application of BS 6472 (1992) are specifically addressed.
The first 95 pages of the book are structured in three parts (Background Information, Measurement and Assessment) and further sub-divided into 18 sections. This is followed by some 71 pages of appendices dealing with a mixture of topics that are of reference and explanatory value.
Part 1 defines various types of vibration and identifies the main sources of concern. The brief, but useful, description of vibration sources specifically deals with road and rail, and construction and tunnelling works. The sensitivity of the human body to vibration and how vibration is rarely a serious cause of damage to structures is also well explained.
Measurement techniques are described and attention drawn to the importance of fitting the method to the objectives of the measurements; that is, are the measurements required to assess the effects of vibration on buildings, people or sensitive equipment? For construction professionals some more directed advice in the preparation of contracts and methods statements might have been helpful.
The properties of transducers and recording instrumentation are outlined in an informative way with the section on data processing putting heavy emphasis on the calculation of vibration dose value (VDV). This is illustrative of the book’s concentration on the impact of railway operation on human disturbance, possibly at the expense of detail relevant to wider and more common issues.
Part 3 deals with ‘assessment’, and again the ANC authors’ expertise in the impact of noise and vibration in terms of human response is particularly evident. Their summary and discussion of this complex problem is both useful and timely and will be valuable to specialists in the field. By way of contrast, section 17 gives guidelines on the reporting of results which are likely to be appreciated by most engineers faced with a vibration problem.
The appendices form a substantial proportion of the book and are very varied in content and utility. For instance, Appendix E provides a helpful list of the most relevant British Standards and briefly gives links and conflicts with current ISO documents. But the inclusion of some detailed text in Appendices A and B does not seem to be essential to the body of the book, and might have been better dealt with by provision of the classical references on stress wave propagation in solids which are presently absent.
The title suggests, to the reviewer at least, a book with a wider and perhaps more evenly balanced approach to the subject. From a tunnelling perspective the greatest vibration problem has traditionally arisen from drill and blast works, but the book devotes less than one page to this problem.
Recently, however, the impact of tunnel construction and operation beneath urban areas has become of considerable interest particularly during the planning of railway alignments and in track design.
The great strength of the book lies in the dissemination of its authors’ recent experience in attempting to advance the quantitative prediction of vibration and re-radiated noise from railway sources and in particular from trains in tunnels. If this subject is of interest to you then this book is both mandatory reading and an essential reference document.
Measurement & Assessment of Groundbourne Noise and Vibration is priced at US$47.85; web site: www.association-of-noise-consultants.co.uk; fax: +44 1763 853252
Review by Dr Barry New, Geotechnical Consulting Group
