Dongyun Liu presents the award-winning study on fatigue in railway noise barriers at SMAR 2026 in Dresden.
4 September 2026
Award for research on railway noise barriers
A study on how railway noise barriers are affected by repeated loading has received an Early Career Paper Award at the international SMAR 2026 conference. One of the researchers behind the study is Dongyun Liu, postdoctoral researcher in Structural Engineering at Luleå University of Technology.
At the conference in Dresden, held from 26 to 28 August, Dongyun Liu received the award for the paper Fatigue assessment of railway noise barriers based on field monitoring, ML-driven stress prediction and numerical modeling. The award recognizes and encourages excellent research by early career researchers.
“It means a lot to me, especially at this stage of my research career. It is very encouraging to see our work recognized by the SMAR conference, and it gives me even more motivation to continue working on practical challenges in railway infrastructure,” says Dongyun Liu.
The study examines how railway noise barriers are affected by loads generated by passing trains and how these loads can contribute to fatigue damage over time.
The researchers combine long-term field monitoring with machine learning and numerical modelling. The approach is used to estimate stresses at the bases of the steel posts supporting the noise barriers under realistic train operating and environmental conditions.
The work can contribute to better assessments of how the structures are affected over time and provide a basis for service-life assessment and future maintenance planning.
The paper was written by Dongyun Liu, Chao Wang, Jaime Gonzalez-Libreros, Lennart Elfgren and Gabriel Sas.
SMAR 2026, the 8th International Conference on Smart Monitoring, Assessment and Rehabilitation of Civil Structures, was held in Dresden, Germany.
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