The compression wave generated by a high-speed train

at a vented tunnel entrancea)

M. S. Howe
Boston University, College of Engineering, 110 Cummington Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215

~Received 11 May 1997; revised 10 April 1998; accepted 20 April 1998!

An analytical investigation is made of the compression wave generated when a high-speed train
enters a long tunnel with distributed venting. The compression wave amplitude is determined by
train speed and the area ratio of the train and tunnel, but its rise time depends principally on the
geometry of the tunnel entrance. Vented tunnel entrance ‘‘hoods’’ are frequently used to increase
the rise time, in order to reduce the impact of the micro-pressure pulse radiated from the tunnel exit
when the compression wave arrives at the far end of the tunnel. Approximate calculations are
performed to determine the initial rise time for a tunnel of rectangular cross section with a
continuously variable vented roof near the entrance, for train Mach numbers less than about 0.2
~;150 mph!. The distribution of venting apertures can be optimized to maximize rise time, and a
sixfold increase is shown to be possible when the aperture distribution decreases exponentially with
distance into the tunnel. The method of this paper is applicable also to more general tunnel entrance
geometries, and for higher train Mach numbers. © 1998 Acoustical Society of America.
@S0001-4966~98!01408-8#
PACS numbers: 43.10.Ln, 43.28.Mw, 43.28.Py, 43.50.Lj @LCS#

INTRODUCTION modest improvements. For example, reductions of about 3

A compression wave is generated when a train enters a
tunnel. The wave propagates ahead of the train at about the
speed of sound and emerges from the far end as a spherically
spreading acoustic pulse, frequently called a micro-pressure
wave.1,2 Environmental problems caused by large amplitude
micro-pressure waves first became apparent in 1975, in Ja-
pan. For high-speed trains ~whose Mach number exceeds
about 0.15! passing through a long tunnel with concrete slab
tracks, nonlinear steepening of the compression wave can
produce peak micro-pressure wave amplitudes of order 50 Pa
('1 lb/ft2 or about 128 dB! in the neighborhood of the
tunnel exit. The resulting disturbance is comparable in mag-
nitude to that created on the ground by the sonic boom from
a supersonic aircraft. When the track is ballasted, nonlinear
steepening is opposed by dissipation of high frequency com-
ponents of the compression wavefront within ballast inter-
stices, and the micro-pressure wave is usually less
important.3
The maximum amplitude of the compression wave is
determined primarily by the train speed at the tunnel en-
trance and the cross-sectional area of the train relative to that
of the tunnel. The micro-pressure wave amplitude is roughly
proportional to the compression wave pressure gradient at
the tunnel exit, however, and methods for reducing its inten-
sity usually involve attempts to decrease the initial value of
the pressure gradient at the tunnel entrance, because the sub-
sequent nonlinear steepening is then smaller.3 This can be
done by modifying train design, either to reduce its relative
cross-sectional area, or to increase the slenderness of the
front of the train. In practice these approaches yield only
a!
‘‘Selected research articles’’ are ones chosen occasionally by the Editor-
in-Chief that are judged ~a! to have a subject of wide acoustical interest,
and ~b! to be written for understanding by broad acoustical readership.
dB in the peak compression wave pressure gradient are pos-
sible from optimizations of the train nose profile.4,5
Larger reductions can be achieved by changes in tunnel
design. For adjacent, parallel tunnels the pressure gradient
can be reduced by allowing the compression wave to ‘‘es-
cape’’ through a channel joining the tunnels close to the
entrance. Similar reductions occur when the wavefront
passes a tunnel side-branch, which may be designed to ab-
sorb all of the entering wave energy, and a system consisting
of a periodic distribution of side-branch Helmholtz resona-
tors has been proposed.6 However, the greatest attenuations
are currently obtained by installing a ‘‘hood’’ extending
30–50 m ahead of the tunnel entrance. The compression
wave begins to form as the train enters the hood, but its rise
time is increased by venting high pressure air through appro-
priately placed ‘‘windows’’ in the hood walls. A fivefold
increase in rise time has been achieved in this way using a
hood of length 49 m.3
In this paper a theory of compression wave generation is
presented for a train entering a tunnel whose walls are vented
to the ambient atmosphere by a continuous distribution of
openings near the tunnel entrance. Our analytical model
treats the vents as a continuum, and the objective is to deter-
mine their distribution to maximize the rise time of the com-
pression wave. Intuitive arguments suggest that this can be
done by gradually decreasing the ‘‘fractional open area’’ of
the tunnel wall with distance into the tunnel. The theory is an
extension of a general method described in Ref. 7 for calcu-
lating the compression wave in terms of the geometry of the
tunnel entrance. The train is represented by a distribution of
sources determined by the cross-sectional variation of the
train profile, and the compression wave is expressed as the
convolution product of these sources and a compact Green’s
function.8 The Green’s function has vanishing normal de-

1158 J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104 (3), Pt. 1, September 1998 0001-4966/98/104(3)/1158/7/$15.00 © 1998 Acoustical Society of America 1158

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FIG. 1. ~a! Tunnel entrance with vented roof. ~b! Mapping the Z plane
bounded by the profile of the tunnel roof and its image in the ground onto
the right half of the z plane.
rivative on the tunnel walls, and on any rigid structures near
the entrance, and embodies all of the geometrical effects of
the tunnel entrance and its environment. This approach may
be contrasted, for example, with that of Vardy9,10 ~following
Swarden and Wilson11! who used the method of characteris-
tics for waves propagating in one dimension.
The present calculations are simplified by restricting at-
tention to tunnels of rectangular cross-section, with the en-
trance vents confined to the flat roof. This permits the theory
to be developed using conformal mapping. More general,
three-dimensional entrance geometries will normally require
Green’s function to be determined numerically. The theory is
formulated in Sec. I. In Sec. II the influence of roof venting
on Green’s function is discussed. The fractional open area of
the vents is assumed to decrease in a prescribed manner with
distance from the tunnel entrance, and an integral equation is
derived whose solution determines the modified form of
Green’s function. This is solved by collocation and applied
in Sec. III to investigate compression wave generation when
the distribution of the vents decreases exponentially with dis-
tance into the tunnel.
I. CALCULATION OF THE COMPRESSION WAVE
A. Representation in terms of volume sources
Consider a train travelling at constant speed U in the
negative x direction into a rigid walled, rectangular cylindri-
cal tunnel of height h and cross-sectional area A, as illus-
trated in Fig. 1. The tunnel extends along the negative x axis,
where the origin of the rectangular axes (x,y,z) is at the
point O at ground level in the plane of the tunnel entrance.
The profiled nose of the train is of length L, beyond which
the train cross section is constant and of area A 0 . The ratio
A0 /A is assumed to be small ~less than about 0.2, for the
simple model described below!. For the present exploratory
1159 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 104, No. 3, Pt. 1, September 1998
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calculations the train Mach number M 5U/c 0 (c 0 5 speed of
sound! is assumed to be smaller than about 0.2, but this
restriction can be relaxed by modification of the analysis,
although this is not discussed here.
The compression wave is generated by the gross dis-
placement of the air in the tunnel entrance by the incoming
train, and for a sufficiently streamlined train the influence on
this of flow separation can be ignored in a first approxima-
tion. When viscous effects at the tunnel walls are also ne-
glected, the displacement of the air by the moving train is
equivalent to that produced by a distribution of moving vol-
ume sources of constant strengths, and the unsteady motion
they produce can be represented by a velocity potential
f (x,t). The sources translate at the speed U of the train, and
their distribution at time t is denoted by q(x1Ut,y,z),
where q(x) may be taken to be the source distribution at the
instant t50 at which the nose of the train just enters the
tunnel.
The velocity potential is the solution with outgoing
wave behavior of
S 1 ]2
c 20 ] t 2
D
2¹ 2 f 52q ~ x1Ut,y,z ! , ~1!
and must also satisfy the condition ] f / ] x n 50 of vanishing
normal velocity on the rigid surfaces S, say, comprising the
tunnel walls and all solid surfaces ~other than the train! out-
side the entrance of the tunnel. The solution can be written
f ~ x,t ! 52 EE G ~ x,x8 ;t2 t ! q ~ x8 , t ! d 3 x8 d t ,
where Green’s function G (x,x8 ;t2 t ) is the corresponding
solution of ~1! when the right hand side is replaced by d (x
2x8 ) d (t2 t ). At typical train Mach numbers, the character-
istic thickness of the compression wavefront is large com-
pared to the tunnel diameter, and Green’s function may then
be approximated by7
c0
G ~ x,y;t2 t ! ' $ H ~ t2 t 2 u f * ~ x! 2 f * ~ y! u /c o !
2A
2H ~ t2 t 1„f * ~ x! 1 f * ~ y! …/c o ! % , ~2!
where H(x)50,1 according as x"0 is the Heaviside step
function, and f * (x) is a solution of Laplace’s equation de-
scribing incompressible, irrotational flow out of the tunnel
entrance. f * (x) is normalized such that f * (x)'x2 l , for
u x u @h within the tunnel and, f * (x);O(1/u xu ) for u xu @h
outside the tunnel, where l ;h is the tunnel end
correction.12 The precise functional form of f * (x) depends
on the geometry of the entrance, but f * (x) varies continu-
ously through the entrance, increasing from a large negative
value when x is far within the tunnel, to zero at u xu 5`
outside. It is numerically of order h in the vicinity of the
entrance, where its rate of change depends on the shape of
the entrance and on the ambient environment, for example
on whether or not the entrance is ‘‘flared’’ or opens out into
an embanked channel, etc.
In a long tunnel, Eq. ~1! is strictly applicable only when
nonlinear steepening is ignored. In these circumstances it
Michael Howe: High-speed train compression wave 1159
predicts the initial form of the compression wave profile sev- ] AT / ] x 8 Þ0. For a long train, the integral becomes constant
eral tunnel diameters ahead of the entrance, where the am- and equal to UA0 just after the passage of the nose through
plitude of the unsteady motion is small, and the perturbation the tunnel entrance into the region where ] f * / ] x51; this
pressure p52 r 0 ] f / ] t, where r 0 is the undisturbed air den- constant value is the maximum compression wave ampli-
sity. This initial profile is found with the aid of ~2! to be tude, equal approximately to r 0 U 2 A0 /A at low Mach num-
given by ~see Ref. 7 for details! bers. For a tunnel of constant cross-sectional area, or one
with a ‘‘flared’’ entrance, ] f * / ] x 8 decreases smoothly to
p ~ x,t ! [p ~ x,t ! '
r 0U
A
E q ~ x 8 1U @ t # ,y 8 ,z 8 ! zero in the direction out of the entrance along the path of the
train, and the pressure rise across compression wavefront
therefore tends to be monotonic.
]f*
3 ~ x8 ! d 3 x8 , x8 5 ~ x 8 ,y 8 ,z 8 ! ,
]x8
~3! II. THE POTENTIAL f * „x… FOR A VENTED TUNNEL
where the integration is taken over the region occupied by A. Integral formula for f * „x…
the sources, and @ t # 't1x/c 0 is the retarded time. The im-
pulsive micro-pressure wave p 8 (x,t), say, that radiates from Equation ~5! implies that the initial rise time of the com-
the far end of the tunnel is given in terms of the compression pression wavefront is governed by the behavior of
wave, and at large distance r from the tunnel exit at x ] 2 f * (x)/ ] x 2 , which is nonzero only in the vicinity of the
5x E , say, by the formula3,12,13 tunnel entrance. The magnitude of this second derivative
along the path of the train can be reduced by moderately
A ]p flaring the tunnel entrance, thereby causing the streamlines
p 8 ~ x,t ! ' ~ x E ,t2r/c 0 ! , r@h, ~4!
Vc 0 r ] t of the hypothetical potential outflow determined by f * to
diverge more gradually from the entrance. A similar result is
where V is the effective solid angle into which the wave achieved by the presence of a suitable arrangement of vents
radiates, determined by local conditions near the exit. Ac- near the tunnel entrance, through which a portion of the po-
cording to Eq. ~3! tential flow f * can ‘‘escape’’ before reaching the entrance.

E
]p r 0U 2 The distribution of vents along the tunnel wall must be cho-
~ x,t ! '2 q ~ x 8 1U @ t # ,y 8 ,z 8 ! sen carefully, however, since a rapid divergence of the
]t A streamlines will merely cause the tunnel to be acoustically
shorter, and the formation of the compression wave to be
] 2f *
3 ~ x8 ! d 3 x8 . ~5! delayed until the train passes from the vented to the unvented
]x8 2
section of the tunnel entrance, with no increase in rise time.
However, the actual value to be used on the right on ~4! will The influence of venting will be examined by assuming
usually be considerably different from that predicted by this the tunnel roof near the entrance to be perforated with iden-
formula because of nonlinear steepening of the wave in a tical apertures distributed with a number N (x) per unit area
long tunnel. Solution ~3! should be regarded as defining the ~Fig. 1!. The aperture cross section is assumed to be suffi-
initial waveform for use in a one-dimensional nonlinear ciently large that the unsteady aperture flows produced by
model of wave propagation in the tunnel. This aspect of the the passage of the train may be regarded as irrotational. This
problem is not pursued here, where attention is restricted to should be a good approximation during the period of wave
the mechanism of compression wave generation. formation, as the train enters the tunnel, since turbulence
diffusion from aperture walls and from the train occurs over
a much longer timescale. The aperture distribution function
B. The volume source strength N (x) is at our disposal, and can be adjusted to modify the
rise time of the compression wave.
Equation ~3! expresses the compression wave in terms
Introduce the representation
of a source distribution q that depends on the shape of the
train, but is nonzero only near the nose and tail. For small f * ~ x! 5 f 0* ~ x! 1 f A* ~ x! , ~7!
values of the area ratio A0 /A, it was shown in Ref. 7, by
comparison with the experiments of Maeda et al.,4 that q is where f *0 (x) is the potential function f * in the absence of
well approximated by the line source venting, and f A * (x) is the additional contribution from the
presence of the vents. To determine f A * (x), let G(x,x8 ) de-
] AT note the potential flow Green’s function that satisfies ¹ 2 G
q ~ x,y,z ! 5U ~ x ! d ~ y ! d ~ z2z T! , ~6!
]x 5 d (x2x8 ), and is defined such that G has vanishing normal
derivative on the unperforated tunnel walls, and ¹G→0 at
where A T(x) is the cross-sectional area of the train at dis- large distances from the point source, both within and out-
tance x measured from the nose, so that AT(L)[A 0 , and side the tunnel. Then

S D
the ground level line y50,z5z T lies in the vertical plane of
symmetry of the train.
The integration in ~3! is accordingly confined to the in-
tervals on the x 8 axis where the retarded value of
f A* ~ x! 5 R S
@ G ~ x,x8 !# x8
] f A*
] x 8n
~ x8 !
1
dS ~ x8 ! , ~8!

1160 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 104, No. 3, Pt. 1, September 1998 Michael Howe: High-speed train compression wave 1160

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where the integration is over the tunnel walls, and
(]fA * / ] x n8 ) 1 denotes the normal velocity within an aperture
directed out of the tunnel. The square bracket notation in this
formula is defined such that, for any function f (x), @ f (x) # x is
the exterior minus the interior limiting values of f (x) as the
point x approaches the tunnel wall.
Now let Q̄(x j )5r S j ( ] f A* / ] x 8n ) 1 dS(x8 )be the volume
flux directed out of the tunnel through the jth aperture S j
whose centroid is at x j . When the apertures are small rela-
tive to the tunnel diameter, and the distance of the point x
from the nearest aperture exceeds the aperture diameter,
G(x,x8 )'G(x,x j ) may be regarded as constant when per-
forming the integration in ~8! over S j . Since the length scale
of variation of Q̄(x j ) between neighboring apertures must be
comparable to that of the potential function f * 0 , which may
be supposed to drive the motion through the apertures, and
there are N apertures per unit area of the tunnel wall, it
follows that the integrand of ~8! can be approximated by
N (x8 )Q̄(x8 ) @ G(x,x8 ) # x8 , and therefore that
C. Rectangular tunnel with a vented roof
The determination of Q from ~11! requires a knowledge
of both the unperforated velocity potential f * 0 (x) and
Green’s function G(x,x8 ). Although f * 0 (x) can readily be
calculated for a tunnel of circular or semi-circular cylindrical
form,7 a convenient analytical representation of the Green’s
function is not generally available. We may avoid this diffi-
culty for the tunnel of rectangular cross section in Fig. 1 by
adopting a two-dimensional approximation to the potential
flow from the entrance, by assuming that the local irrota-
tional motion in the entrance is uniform in the z direction
~transverse to the direction of motion of the train!. This ap-
proximation cannot give a complete description of compres-
sion wave generation, but it yields predictions that are fully
consistent with analytical and numerical results obtained pre-
viously for an unvented tunnel.4,5,7,14,15
Consider the conformal transformation16
pZ
215 z 2 1ln z 2 , ~12!
h

f * ~ x! 5 f *
0 ~ x! 1 R
S
Q ~ x8 !@ G ~ x,x8 !# x8 dS ~ x8 ! , which maps the Z5x1iy plane bounded by the tunnel roof
and its image in the ground @Fig. 1~b!# onto the right half
~Re z .0) of the z plane, with the entrance points Z56ih
Q ~ x8 ! [N ~ x8 ! Q̄ ~ x8 ! . ~9! mapping onto z 56i, and the point at infinity within the
tunnel mapping onto z 50.
In this formula Q(x) is the volume flux per unit surface area The potential f 0* is the real part of w 0 [ f 0* 1i c 0*
of the tunnel wall, and the integration is over the region 5(2h/ p )ln z. The perforations are assumed to be confined
where QÞ0. to the roof of the tunnel and distributed uniformly in the z
direction ~out of the plane of the paper in Fig. 1!, so that
N [N (x). The complex potential of flow from the vented
B. Calculation of Q „x… tunnel entrance is then given by the following analog of Eq.
~9!
The volume flux Q̄(x j ) through the jth aperture can be
expressed in terms of the potential difference @ f̄ * # x j across
the aperture produced by the unperforated potential f * o and
w[ f * 1i c * 5w 0 1
1
p
E 2`
0
Q ~ x 8 ! $ ln~ z 2 1 j 21 ~ x 8 !!

the potential generated by the volume fluxes through all of

2ln~ z 2 1 j 22 ~ x 8 !! % dx 8 , ~13!
the other apertures, by means of Rayleigh’s formula
where z 5i j 6 (x 8 ) ( j 1 .1, 0, j 2 ,1) are the images of the
Q̄ ~ x j ! 5K @ f̄ * # x j , ~10! points Z5x 8 1i(h60) on the exterior and interior surfaces
of the roof. The volume flux density Q is determined by the
where K is the Rayleigh conductivity of the aperture.12 K integral equation

U U
has the dimensions of length, and depends only on the shape
and size of the aperture; it is equal to 2R for a circular
aperture of radius R in a thin wall, and approximately equal Q ~ x ! 52 a ~ x ! ln
j 1~ x !
j 2~ x !
1
a~ x !
h
E 2`
0
Q~ x8!
to A (aperture area/ p ) for a nonelongated, thin wall aperture
of arbitrary shape. The potential difference @ f̄ * # x j can actu-
ally be approximated by the representation ~9! of f * (x),
because, although @ G(x j ,x8 ) # x8 is singular as x8 →x j , the
HU
3 ln
j 21 ~ x 8 ! 2 j 21 ~ x !
j 22 ~ x 8 ! 2 j 21 ~ x !
U
singularity is integrable, and its contribution to the surface
integral from a vanishingly small region around x8 5x j
shrinks to zero. Thus Q(x) satisfies the integral equation
1ln U j 22 ~ x 8 ! 2 j 22 ~ x !
j 21 ~ x 8 ! 2 j 22 ~ x !
UJ dx 8 , ~14!

where a is the dimensionless quantity

Q ~ x! 5K N ~ x!@ f *
0 # x1K N ~ x ! R S
Q ~ x8 !
a~ x !5
hK
N ~ x !. ~15!
p
3@@ G ~ x,x8 !# x8 # x dS ~ x8 ! , ~11!
As indicated below, a typical maximum value of a is 0.35.
which can be solved by collocation when f *
0 (x) and N (x) For circular venting apertures of diameter K 51 ft and a
are prescribed. tunnel of height h'20 ft, this implies that the local value of

1161 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 104, No. 3, Pt. 1, September 1998 Michael Howe: High-speed train compression wave 1161

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FIG. 2. Volume flux distribution function Q(x) for a vented tunnel roof
with a (x)[(hK / p )N (x)50.35ex/h .

FIG. 4. Compression waves p/( r 0 U 2 A0 /A) ~— — — —! and pressure

the fractional open area of the roof N p K /4 does not ex- 2 gradients ( ] p/ ] t)/( r 0 U 3 A0 /hA) ~—————! for an unvented tunnel,
ceed about 5%. and for roof venting with a (x)50.35e x/h .

D. Potential flow from the vented tunnel entrance ground indicates that ] 2 f * / ] x 2 will be correspondingly
Figure 2 illustrates the variation of the predicted volume smaller along the train track. Equation ~5! then suggests that
flux density Q as a function of x/h when the fractional open the rise time of the compression wave will be larger for the
area of the vents decreases exponentially from the tunnel vented tunnel.
entrance according to a (x)50.35e x/h . Q vanishes at the tun-
nel entrance, where the potential jump across the roof is null, III. INFLUENCE OF VENTING ON COMPRESSION
and attains a maximum near x52h. The dramatic effect of WAVE RISE TIME
these vents on the potential flow from the entrance can be A. Front of train modeled by a point source
calculated from ~13! and is depicted in Fig. 3, in which
streamlines c * (x)5constant are plotted for both the un- Preliminary estimates of the influence of roof venting
vented and vented tunnel entrances. The more gradual diver- can be obtained by assuming that the source distribution ~6!
gence of the streamlines from the vented tunnel in the vicin- that models fluid displacement by the nose of the train is
ity of the center line of the tunnel plus its image in the concentrated in one point, i.e., by taking
q ~ x! 'A0 U d ~ x ! d ~ y ! d ~ z ! , ~16!
where the net source strength A 0 U5 * L0 U( ] AT / ] x)dx,
and
the vertical plane of symmetry of the train is taken to coin-
cide with z50. This approximation for q is formally identi-
cal to that obtained when the train is modeled by a semi-
infinite cylinder of cross-sectional area A0 .
Equations ~3! and ~5! now supply the following approxi-
mations to the pressure and pressure gradient of the compres-
sion wave generated as the train enters the tunnel,
r 0 U 2 A0 ] F *
p ~ x,t ! ' ~ 2U @ t # /h,0,0 ! ,
A ]X
~17!
]p r 0 U A0 ] F *
3 2
~ x,t ! '2 ~ 2U @ t # /h,0,0 ! ,
]t hA ]X2
where the following dimensionless notation has been intro-
duced:
x f * ~ x!
X5 , F * ~ X,y/h,z/h ! 5 . ~18!
h h
Equations ~17! are applicable within the tunnel at large dis-
tances from the entrance, but before nonlinear steepening of
the wavefront becomes important.
The dashed and solid curves in Fig. 4, respectively, rep-
FIG. 3. Streamlines of uniform flow from the tunnel entrance defined by the
resent the predicted pressure and pressure gradient when the
velocity potential f * (x): ~a! unvented tunnel; ~b! vented roof with a (x) behavior of f * near the tunnel entrance is determined by the
[(hK / p )N (x)50.35e x/h . two-dimensional approximation ~13! for ~i! an unvented tun-

1162 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 104, No. 3, Pt. 1, September 1998 Michael Howe: High-speed train compression wave 1162

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 FIG. 6. Compression wave pressure gradients ( ] p/ ] t)/( r 0 U 3 A0 /hA) for
L/h52: ~a! unvented entrance; ~b! vented with a (x)50.35e 0.6x/h .

FIG. 5. ~a! Volume flux distribution Q(x) for a (x)50.35e 0.6x/h . ~b! Com-
pression waves p/( r 0 U 2 A0 /A) ~— — — —! and pressure gradients
]p 22 r 0 U 3 A0
( ] p/ ] t)/( r 0 U 3 A0 /hA) ~————! for the unvented and vented tunnels. ~ x,t ! '
]t LA
nel, and ~ii! a tunnel with the roof venting of Fig. 2 ~see Sec.
II D!, for which a (x)[hK N(x)/ p 50.35e x/h . Venting in-
creases the rise time of the wave by a factor of about 25 , and
3 E 0
L/h
F ~ X,h/L !
] 2F *
]X2
~ X2U @ t # /h,0,0 ! dX,

the maximum pressure gradient is 52 as small. If the differ- ~19!

ence in the pressure gradients is maintained to the far end of
the tunnel, the micro-pressure wave ~4! radiating from the
end would be reduced in intensity by about 8 dB.
The increase in compression wave rise time can be
maximized by an optimal choice of the vent distribution
function a (x). When the search for this optimum is re-
stricted to exponentially varying a (x), the greatest attenua-
tion is obtained for a (x)50.35e 0.6x/h . Details for this case
are depicted in Fig. 5, where the rise time is seen to experi-
ence a six-fold increase, and the maximum pressure gradient
is about 27% of its value in the unvented tunnel ~correspond-
ing to a reduction in the micro-pressure wave intensity of
11.3 dB!.
B. Symmetric nose profiles
Numerical and experimental studies of compression
wave generation frequently consider axisymmetric model
trains projected along the axis of symmetry of a circular
cylindrical tunnel. The most common nose profiles are the
circular cone, and the paraboloid or ellipsoid of revolution.
For the configuration of Fig. 1~a! the train would consist of
the upper half of such an axisymmetric model ~with its flat
base lying on y510, just above ground level!, and the ana-
lytical representation of the compression wave pressure gra-
dient may be cast in the form
where L is the length of the profiled nose, and the function
F (X,h/L) is given by
h 1 h
F ~ X,h/L ! 5 X, , 12 X, ~20!
L 2 L
respectively, for the conical, paraboloidal and ellipsoidal
nose profile. The compression wave pressure gradients
( ] p/ ] t)/( r 0 U 3 A0 /hA) generated by these profiles are
plotted in Fig. 6~a! for the unvented tunnel when L/h52.
These results resemble closely both in magnitude and phase
corresponding predictions for semi-circular cylindrical tun-
nels of radius h.3,7,14,15 The corresponding profiles for the
optimal case in which a (x)50.35e 0.6x/h is illustrated in Fig.
6~b!.
IV. CONCLUSION
The amplitude of the compression wave produced when
a high-speed train enters a long tunnel is controlled princi-
pally by train speed and the area ratio of the train and tunnel.
The initial rise time of the wave is governed by the nose
profile of the train and the geometry of the tunnel entrance
and environment. Vented entrance ‘‘hoods’’ have been used
to increase the rise time and thereby reduce the impact of the
micro-pressure pulse that radiates from the far end of the
tunnel. The approximate calculations described in this paper

1163 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 104, No. 3, Pt. 1, September 1998 Michael Howe: High-speed train compression wave 1163

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are applicable to a tunnel of rectangular cross section with a
variably vented roof near the entrance, and permit the distri-
bution of the vents to be optimized to maximize rise time.
Only the very simplest case in which the aperture distribu-
tion decreases exponentially with distance into the tunnel has
been considered, but our predictions indicate that at least
sixfold increases in the rise time are then possible. Applica-
tion of the method to tunnels with more complicated en-
trance geometries is straightforward in principle. This is cur-
rently being done for a tunnel of circular cylindrical cross-
section, of the type frequently used in model scale tests, and
which should therefore permit experimental validation of the
theory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author expresses his gratitude to Dr. Tatsuo Maeda,
Head of the Aerodynamics and Noise Reduction Group of
the Railway Technical Research Institute, Tokyo, for his
help and advice during the preparation of this paper.
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