In-situ ground vibration tests in Southern Taiwan Science Park

The Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) passes through the Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) where the high-tech fabs inside are very sensitive to ground vibrations. In order to characterize the attenuation of ground vibration with distance in STSP, a series of small-scale in-situ vibration tests were conducted at STSP sites before the operation of THSR. The tests include falling weight tests and shaking tests which were performed on the ground surface, on shallow foundation, and on prototype pile foundation. For falling weight tests, hammer weights of 80, 120, 220, 260, 430 kN and drop heights of 0.5 m-3.0 m were adopted to generate different levels of ground vibration. For shaking tests, exciters that can generate harmonic loads up to 100 or 200 kN were used for ground vibration tests. For all tests, the ground vibrations at various distances were monitored to deduce the associated attenuation coefficients. In this paper, results of all falling weight tests and shaking tests are summarized and compared with those of in-situ measurements of ground vibrations induced by the test runs of THSR trains. Conclusions show that the results of small-scale falling weight vibration tests can be used to predict the decay of ground vibration induced by the operation of high speed trains.