OPANEL – Development of a low-height device to reduce noise in urban railway environments

The noise generated by railway infrastructure in urban environments, with its consequent discomfort to the population, has gained importance with the emergence of legislation that requires defining which areas have these negative characteristics for the population, throughout Europe, and what action plans exist to mitigate the acoustic impact.

Objectives:

This is how OPANEL was born, a project led by Uniblok, a company belonging to Ormazabal, with the collaboration of the Tecnalia Technology Center, and which aims to put an end to this problem through the development of a device that allows mitigating this acoustic impact. This solution also seeks to reduce the implementation problems encountered with traditional products such as high-rise acoustic barriers, which end up being ineffective and having a high visual impact, due to reaching heights of up to 4 metres, in homes adjacent to railway tracks. For this reason, Uniblok is developing a less intrusive solution with similar or greater effectiveness than current ones.

Others:

OPANEL thus aims to solve these technical and safety problems through a low-rise sound-reducing device designed for installation in railway environments where the source of the noise comes from both low-speed friction between the wheels of the wagons and the railway rail, and from the vibration of the train elements themselves. This is why the solution must comply with international standards, in order to position Uniblokas a benchmark in this area, allowing the internationalization of the product.
To this end, Uniblokis relying on the technical specifications that the railway infrastructure managers themselves allow in the vicinity of the tracks and the train itself, thus achieving, as a final result, a mini-acoustic barrier model that stops the spread of noise generated by the lower elements of the train, as well as that generated by the elements that make up the structure of the track. The result of the OPANEL project must also overcome some of the main problems of conventional acoustic screens, such as installation space, deep foundations, or obstruction in the event of evacuation.

Project financed by:

The OPANEL project has been co-financed by FEDER Funds and the Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha.