Ambient vibration analysis and mitigation in the site of Villa Ruffo in

Rome
Marco Breccolotti & Annibale Luigi Materazzi
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Perugia, Italy

ABSTRACT: The results of a campaign of ambient vibration measurements carried out on the site of Villa
Ruffo in Rome are presented. The vibrations are generated by the passage of trains in the existing subway line
that crosses the park of the Villa. The line will be discontinued in the next years and replaced with a brand
new one. The acquisitions allowed to evaluate the actual vibrations level, accordingly to the procedure indi-
cated by the Italian Code UNI 9614 and to assess the discomfort induced to people. As the vibration level ex-
ceeds the limiting value, a system to mitigate the vibrations, to be installed in the new line, was designed.
It consists in a tuned mass floating trackbed, composed of R.C. slab resting over steel sprigs, designed to filter
the range of frequencies of the disturbance. A finite element model was used to discuss the effects of the slab
compliance.

1 INTRODUCTION tinued and very likely it will cause an increase in the

The passage of trains in the subway lines is a well
known source of noise and vibrations that can cause
damage to the surrounding buildings disturb to the
people and to sensitive facilities (Bachmann, 1991).
The vibrations are originated by the interaction
between the moving axles and the tracks as a conse-
quence of the rail roughness, which is often mod-
elled as a random process (ORE, 1971).
In the recent years an increasing attention has
been devoted to these problems, with special refer-
ence to the discomfort due to the transit of high
speed trains, because this type of transporting is
spreading in this period all over the world. Several
studies based on campaigns of field measurement al-
lowed to understand the generating mechanism and
to identify the frequency content of the vibrations
(Degrande, 2001; Van den Broek, 2002; Auersch,
2002).
An interesting example of these problems is con-
stituted by the site of Villa Ruffo, which is located in
the very heart of Rome, close to Piazza del Popolo.
The park of the Villa is crossed, at a small depth be-
low the buildings basements, by the underground
railway which connects Rome to the town of
Viterbo, some 110 Km away, whose starting termi-
nal lays near the Villa. The vibrations produced by
the railway traffic in the buildings caused damages
to the structures located inside the park and serious
disturbance to the inhabitants.
Moreover a new subway line has been planned to
run along the existing railway which will be discon-
vibration level in the buildings.
In order to objectively quantify the amount of vi-
bration in the actual condition, to estimate the dis-
turbance of the inhabitants and to foresee the future
vibration level, an experimental and analytical
analysis has been carried out. Finally the installation
of suited devices to reduce the vibration effects has
been proposed along with further experimental
measurements to evaluate their effectiveness.
2 THE SITE OF VILLA RUFFO IN ROME
The Villa Ruffo complex is located at the border of
the Villa Borghese Park in downtown Rome. It is
composed of a main building, the Villa Ruffo itself,
and several minor buildings.
The site is already disturbed from the vibrations
produced by the passage of the Rome-Viterbo line
trains, in the underground of the park of the Villa
(Figure 1).
The main building, that is a National Heritage, is
located on a small hill only few meters over the
subway ceiling. Other small buildings, like the one
located at the entrance of the park, are located at a
level slightly lower than the main building.
All the buildings were built with masonry.
The passage of the subway trains causes high vi-
bration levels that are more severe in the secondary
buildings from the point of view of the inhabitants
discomfort and induced cracking in the main build-
ing, which is more sensitive.
Figure 1. Location of the subway stations.
Figure 2. Location of the accelerometers.
A new underground subway line has been
planned close to the existing one, causing worry to
the inhabitants for the presumable increment of the
vibrations that it will produce. The existing line will
be discontinued when the new line will begin the
service. The route of the future line of the subway,
as currently it is planned, is represented in the same
Figure 1. To assess the disturbance caused to the in-
habitants of the buildings and to foresee the incre-
ment of the vibration level caused by the new sub-
way line, a campaign of field measurements has
been carried out on the building placed at the en-
trance of the park.
3 VIBRATION MEASUREMENTS
3.1 Measuring equipment
The measurement of the vibrations time history was
carried out using a field equipment composed of
three high sensitivity accelerometers, type PCB 393
C, arranged in a tri-axial configuration, connected to
a 13 bit A/D converter, model DataShuttle Express
manufactured by Strawberry Tree, driven by a dedi-
cated digital computer which was also used for a
preliminary on-line analysis and for storing the data
on a magnetic support.
In fact the measurement system acquired the vi-
brations continuously, but only the most intense e-
vents were selected using a suited trigger level and
subsequently were stored permanently, including
those occurred during a supplementary short dura-
tion before the trigger level were reached.
The measurements were carried out observing
simultaneously the acceleration components along
three orthogonal directions, at a 500 Hz per channel
sampling frequency.
3.2 Localization of the measurement points
The instruments were installed in a room at the first
floor of the Ruffo House, in front of the porters
lodge, near the main entrance to the park (Figure 2).
The location of the measurement point was se-
lected on the basis of preliminary investigation on
the spot which allowed identifying the selected loca-
tion as the most exposed to the vibrations effects
among the buildings lying in the site of the Villa.
Moreover the plan of the proposed Underground
line (see Figure 1) shows that it will be located
within a short distance, only few meters, from the
measurement point. As a consequence the selected
measurement point is suitable to repeat the vibration
measurements when the new line will be eventually
operated, to observe the future vibration level and
compare it with the actual state.
To avoid the amplification effects due to the lat-
eral structural compliance, the accelerometers have
been installed at the centre of the floor by means of
an expansion anchor, using a steel mounting which
allowed the placing of the instruments along three
orthogonal directions.
With reference to the Figure 2 the channel meas-
uring the vertical acceleration is the no. 1, while the
channels nos. 2 and 3 measure the horizontal accel-
erations.
3.3 Schedule of the measurements
The vibration measurement took place between
April 17 and April 19, 2002, for a total duration of
over 44 hours.
3.4 Analysis of the measured data and
acceptability values
The measured data have been submitted to a pre-
liminary analysis which allowed identifying each vi-
bration event and separating it from the others.
Then the discomfort caused to the inhabitants has
been evaluated applying the Italian Code UNI 9614
Vibration measurement in buildings and annoyance
evaluation (in Italian).
where Lw,i are the equivalent levels of the 1/3 octave
bands after having been weighted in frequency.
The computations were repeated for three times
for the directions of propagation within the human
body defined by the UNI 9614. The z axis is directed
as the backbone, the x axis exits from the mans face
and the y-axis completes a Cartesian frame of refer-
ence following the right hand rule. The possibility of
an unknown direction, n, is also considered. The cor-
responding vibrations levels are indicated in the fol-
lowing as Lwz, Lwxy, Lwnn.
The limiting values of the vibration levels sug-
gested by UNI 9614 (see Table 1), have been used.
35

Following this Code the vibrations inside a build- Z axis

30 X or Y axis
ing are classified as follows: Unknown dir.
constant level vibrations, when the level of the
25
overall frequency-weighted acceleration varies with

Attenuation (dB)
time within a range of 5 dB; 20
non-constant level vibrations, when the level var-
ies with time within a range greater than 5 dB; 15
impulsive vibrations, when they are caused by
short duration events and are characterized by a sud- 10

den increase and decay of the acceleration level.

5
The measured vibrations proved to belong to the
class of the non-constant level vibrations. 0
Following the UNI 9614, the measured signals 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
were submitted to frequency analysis, which was Frequency (HZ)
carried out by digital filtering, using a bank of third-
Figure 3. Weighting filters supplied by the UNI 9614 code.
octave band filters. The frequency range considered
was between 1 and 80 Hz.
The spectral accuracy in the low frequencies has Table 1. Limiting values of vibration levels (from UNI 9614).
been increased by zero-padding the input signal as Z axis (dB) Other axes (dB)
done before in Materazzi and Breccolotti (2002).
The RMS acceleration within each frequency Critical areas 74 71
band was computed using a time integration length Houses (day) 77 74
of 1 second.
For the sake of clarity the intensities of the accel- Houses (night) 80 77
eration within each band were expressed by their le- Offices 86 83
vel L in dB, using the definition:
Facilities 92 89
2
a
L = 10 log (1)
a0 With reference to the z axis propagation, for the
houses a limiting value of 80 dB is fixed for the day
where a0 was assumed as 10-6 m/s2. and of 77 dB for the night.
In order to take into account properly the sensitiv- In case of the other directions (x axis, y axis, or
ity to the ambient vibrations of the human beings, unknown direction) the figures become 77 dB for
which varies with the frequency and is also related the day and 74 dB for the night.
to the posture, each band of the frequency spectrum
was weighted in frequency. Then the gains recom- 3.5 Obtained results
mended by the UNI 9614 (see Figure 3) were added
to the level of each frequency component (Li). The most severe time history of the acceleration re-
The overall level of the frequency-weighted ac- corded during the investigations is presented in
celeration (Lw) was thus evaluated as: Figure 4. It is a vertically directed acceleration
(channel 1) and it is related to an event occurred dur-
0.1 Lw,i
Lw = 10 log 10 (2) ing the day.
i The Figure 5 is related to the most severe event
occurred during the night and it is again a vertical
 0,4 80

0,3 70

0,2 60
Acceleration (m/s )
2

Number of events
0,1 50

0,0 40

-0,1 30

-0,2 20

-0,3 10

-0,4 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 60 65 70 75 80 85
Time (s) Overall weighted acceleration (dB)

Figure 4. The most severe daily acceleration. Figure 6. Frequency-weighted daily acceleration levels.

0,4 12

0,3
10

0,2
Acceleration (m/s )
2

8
Number of events
0,1

0,0 6

-0,1
4
-0,2

2
-0,3

-0,4 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 60 65 70 75 80 85
Time (s) Overall weighted acceleration (dB)
Figure 5. The most severe nightly acceleration. Figure 7. Frequency-weighted nightly acceleration levels.

acceleration. case of the nightly vibrations the overcoming of the

The maximum daily value of the acceleration was
0.310 m/s2 and it occurred on April 18, 2002 during
the event begun at 06:34:11.358 pm. Vice versa the
nightly maximum value was 0.253 m/s2 and it oc-
curred on April 17, 2002 during the event begun at
10:44:38.116 pm.
The horizontal accelerations were systematically
less intense than the vertical ones.
The levels of the frequency-weighted overall ac-
celeration, determined on the base of the acquisi-
tions made by the accelerometer no. 1 in the vertical
direction, are presented in Figure 6 and Figure 7. In
the first Figure the results of the daily acquisitions,
between 7:00 am and 10:00 pm, are reported. The
other Figure is related to the complementary nightly
hours.
Following the UNI 9614 standard, the x-axis of
propagation is directed from back to chest of a hu-
man being, the y-axis from right side to left side and
the z-axis from foot (or buttocks) to head. The
maximum daily level of the weighted z-axis accel-
eration, Lwz, was 83.31 dB, far greater than the
maximum level of acceptability, set at 80 dB. In the
threshold of acceptability was even more marked,
since a level of 81.54 dB was observed, while the
maximum level of acceptability is 77 dB.
About these figures, it is opportune to remember
that the scale used to express the acceleration levels
is logarithmic and thus an increase by 3.31 dB, pass-
ing from 80 to 83.31 dB, corresponds to an accelera-
tion increase by 46%, while the increase by 4.54 dB
passing from 77 to 81.54 dB corresponds to an in-
crease by 68%.
The levels related to the other directions resulted
less severe.
An other useful element to assess the discomfort
brought to the people is the number of the recorded
events that overcame the acceptability level.
To this purpose the Figure 6 shows that the daily
events beyond the limit were 129, while the nightly
ones (Figure 7) were 28, naturally with reference to
the whole observation period of about 44 hours. This
figures corresponds to roughly one event beyond the
threshold value every 20 minutes during the day and
one event beyond the threshold value every 40 min-
utes during the night.
4 PROPOSAL OF A MITIGATION SYSTEM

4.1 Choice of the vibration mitigation system

Several methods have been developed in the past to
reduce the level of the vibration transmitted from the
tracks to the surrounding buildings (Hung, 2000;
Hunt, 2001). Among the others we remember the
building of trenches, resilient mats, resilient rail fa-
stenings and floating mass trackbeds. In some cases
the buildings affected by the vibration have been
isolated, installing resilient materials or suited me-
chanical devices between the foundations and the
soil.
For its superior performance and durability, in the
present case it was proposed the introduction of a
vibration mitigation system based on a tuned mass
trackbed. It basically consists of a concrete slab,
jointed every 20 m, lying between the ballast and the
bottom of the tunnel. The slab is supported on steel
springs placed in two rows, every 2 m, as depicted in
Figure 8.
In Figure 1 is presented an overall plan view of
the proposed solution, with the relative positions of
the existing station, the planned new station, the
Figure 8. Typical tunnel cross-section with the scheme of the
buildings inside the site of Villa Ruffo and the loca- floating trackbed.
tion of the vibration measurements. The extent of the
floating trackbed is included within 100 m from sen- 3,0
sitive buildings.
2,5
Vibration trasmissibility ratio

4.2 Design of the tuned mass floating trackbed

=0.05
In the design was considered a reference train com- 2,0

pliant with the LM 71 configuration, composed of =1/4

four 250 KN axles, spaced of 1,60 m. Starting from 1,5
0.80 m before the first axle and after the last one, a
uniformly distributed design load of 80 KN/m was 1,0
considered. =1/3

The tuning frequency of the floating trackbed was 0,5

selected taking into account that typical vibration
frequencies induced by trains are usually found in 0,0
the range 10-80 Hz. It was fixed at 6 Hz, neglecting 0 1 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

in the first phase, the mass of the non-suspended part
of the train, the R.C. slab compliance and any inter-
action effect between the tunnel and the underlying
soil. As the excitation frequencies are greater than
2 times the tuning frequency, no additionally
damping device was considered.
Since the mass of the concrete slab between two
consecutive joints, including the ballast, the sleepers
and the rails is roughly 142500 Kg, the total stiffness
of all the springs was set to 200,00 MN/m.
The transmissibility function of the system is
shown in Figure 9.
In evaluating the vibration attenuation it was sup-
posed, to stay by the safe side, the presence of an un-
intentional damping equal to 5 % of critical, even if
the actual value will probably lie under 2,5 %, which
is the figure of the expected damping due to the slab
compliance alone.
Frequency ratio, f/f0
Figure 9. Plot of the vibration transmissibility ratio.
Following Figure 9, the value of the transmissi-
bility ratio at 10 Hz is 0.025, which corresponds to
roughly 15 dB. Naturally the attenuation is better
under higher excitation frequencies.
Taking into account the mass of the unsuspended
parts of the carriage would increase the attenuation.
In fact the mass to be added usually lies around 1/3
of the mass of the train. According to the selected
design train, the total weight of the train over one
slab is 1960 KN. As a consequence the unsuspended
mass may be evaluated as 65000 Kg. With this addi-
tional mass the actual floating trackbed frequency
decreases to 5 Hz, thus improving the attenuation.
A more delicate task is to account for the R.C.
slab compliance, which modifies the frequency re- dal shapes of the slab with the springs mode, modi-
sponse and the transmissibility ratio of the system. fies the response of the system, introducing several
The problem has been investigated through the local minima and maxima, in addition to the overall
FE method, by modeling the R.C. slab with thin first mode. As a consequence the attenuation, whose
plate/shell elements arranged in a 3D configuration values are in general similar to those of the 1DOF
and resting on steel springs (see Figures 10 and 11). system, reduces, in the worst condition, to 7.5 dB at
To make the comparison with the results for the 21 Hz. Anyway the magnitude of the attenuation is
1DOF system (Figure 9) easier, the effect of the sufficient to lower the vibration level under the ac-
non-suspended mass was neglected. The results in ceptability values.
terms of transmissibility ratio are given in Figure 12.
The first six lines listed in the table of the figure
report the transmissibility ratio of the springs be- 5 CONCLUSIONS
longing to one of the two rows supporting the slab.
The last one is the overall flexibility ratio, computed In the present paper the investigation carried out to
as ratio between the total applied dynamic load and evaluate the level of the vibration in the historical
the total static load. The interaction between the mo- site of Villa Ruffo in Rome were presented. A wide
on-site measurement campaign allowed to conclude
that the vibration exceed the acceptability threshold.
The construction of a vibration mitigation system
consisting in a tuned mass floating trackbed has
been proposed to overcome the problem.

Figure 10. Cross-section of the FE mesh.

ACKNOLEDGMENTS

The Authors gratefully acknowledge the invaluable

support given to this study by the late Prince Anto-
nio Ruffo della Scaletta and his family.

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Figure 12. Vibration transmissibility ratios of the 3D system.