Pressure transients generated when high-speed trains pass in a tunnel

An analysis is made of the pressure transients generated when two high-speed trains meet in a tunnel. Safe operation at speeds exceeding about 300 km/h usually demands that the hydraulicblockage produced by a train should be small. The problem canthen be formulated in terms of the scattering of the potentialflow near field of each train by the moving surface of theother train, and this permits the derivation of closed formrepresentations of the unsteady pressure in the special caseof ‘snub nosed’ trains in a tunnel of semicircularcross-section. This solution is used to devise a general procedurefor calculating pressure transients generated by trains ofarbitrary nose profiles in tunnels of arbitrary cross-sectionalshape in terms of a knowledge of the local incompressible potentialflow produced by each train travelling separately in the tunnel.Numerical results indicate that at train Mach numbers exceeding0.25the amplitudes of the pressure transients generated bymeeting trains will typically exceed about 25 per cent of theamplitude of the compression wave produced when a train entersor leaves the tunnel. Received 12 April, 1999. Revised 13 March, 2000.