Characteristics of ground vibrations in STSP deduced from falling weight tests

In order to characterize the ground vibration attenuation with distance in Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP), a series of small-scaled in-situ vibration tests, including falling weight tests and shaking tests, were conducted by National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) at sites in STSP where Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) passes through. Those tests were performed on the ground surface, on shallow foundation, and on proto-type pile foundation. For falling weight tests, hammer weights of 8, 12, 22, 26, 43 metric tons and drop heights of 0.5m∼3.5m were adopted to generate different levels of ground vibration. The decay of ground vibrations with respect to distance was monitored to deduce attenuation coefficient. In this paper, results of all the falling weight tests are summarized and compared with those of in-situ measurements of ground vibrations excited by test runs of THSR trains. Conclusions show that the attenuation coefficients of ground vibration deduced from the falling weight tests present a similar trend to, but with larger values than, those deduced from measurements of test runs of THSR, and therefore can be used to predict the decay of ground vibrations induced by the operation of high-speed trains.