Low noise wheels: Lucchini solutions

Urban areas are particularly sensitive to railway noise. Both the population density and railway traffic increased in the suburbs where trains travel relatively fast and build-ings are relatively high, leading to situations where the use of noise barriers is almost useless. A greater and increasing consciousness of citizens led to a lower tolerance of the visual impact of noise barriers also in those case where they are relatively more effec-tive, i.e. where the railway line is close to low height houses. Some regions with particularly nice landscape start discarding the possibility of us-ing noise barriers to preserve the environment from their intrusive impact. It is evident that in these situations it is necessary to implement noise reduction measures at the source. The exact responsibility share of noise creation in the medium to low speed range is hard to be determined but, quite likely, both the track and the ve-hicles will emit a significant part of noise, leading to the conclusion that treating one of the two components may have limited effect. Lucchini Sidermeccanica SpA manufactures wheelsets since 150 years and has de-veloped a family of wheels with limited noise emission. This paper is intended to give some basic description of each low-noise wheel and to give the details of its application, including the possible limitations.