# Ground-Borne Vibration Due to Construction Works with Respect to Brownfield Areas
## 1 Introduction  
Within the infrastructure of large cities around the world, especially post-industrial cities, the issue of brownfields is intensively being resolved. Brownfields are often located in city centers [1]. Therefore, this issue often appears directly in a city's sustainable development and planning strategies, and big funds are being spent on regenerating brownfields across Europe [2]. Not only in France, Germany and Great Britain, but also in the Czech Republic, brownfields are being revitalized [3, 4]. These sites with old encumbrances are becoming increasingly favored for new development, rather than greenfield construction [5], and many brownfields have technically and culturally valuable buildings, including unique technological equipment. In the renewal of these areas, a wide range of building technologies and practices are often used, among which are those that cause adverse effects in the form of shocks and vibrations [6]. These technologies also include: the building of construction pit walls by piling sheet piles with the aid of a pile-driver [7, 8, 9] or by means of a pile injected into the rock mass, using various technologies [10, 11]; reinforcement of the future sub-bases by vibrating gravel piles [12]; or compaction of the bottom of the construction pit by vibratory techniques [13, 14]. All of these technologies are sources of ground vibrations, and the vibrations induced can cause damage to building structures in the vicinity of such works [15], especially historical objects that are not maintained and which are dilapidated in brownfields. These are not the only sources of vibration that can have a negative impact on brownfields. As shown by a number of studies, the most common seismic load on construction sites is road transport [16, 17, 18], along with railways [19, 20, 21] and trans and subways in urban centers [23, 24, 25]. In general, vibrations can be either continuous or discontinuous. Continuous vibrations are periodic, and the damping is not able to position the receptor to a rest position even for a short time (the sources are, e.g., cars, trains, vibrating rollers). On the contrary, if a discontinuous vibration source (e.g., hammers) causes repeated pulses, then the damping is able to stabilize the receptor between pulses. In the case of discontinuous vibration sources (such as an explosion or an earthquake), the impulse may not repeat at all [26; 27]. The transmission environment may be air, water, soil, or rock. The receptor is a building structure itself, sensitive equipment or, for example, a rocky slope that is threatened with collapse. The problem of seismic waves is presented in specialized seismic literature as well as in publications dealing with the theory of elasticity and oscillating motion [28; 29]. The seismic pulse moves from the seismic source at a rate determined by the physical properties of the rock through which the vibration propagates. The attenuation of the vibration refers to the processes of the vibration intensity reducing in the rock mass due to two causes. In the first case, it is due to the geometry of the system. With increasing distance from the source of the dynamic load, the energy is spread over an increasingly large volume of rock material. In the second case, it is due to the material properties of the rock mass. Considering material damping, vibration damping also occurs as a consequence of rock mass disruption. Discontinuities lead to refraction and reflection of the seismic waves [30]. From the source of the ground dynamic load, vibrations are propagated as surface and body waves. To body waves belong compressional, distortional and shear waves. Considering constructions exposed to vibration, Rayleigh waves are the most significant. This type of wave is described as a circular wave or, in extreme cases, as an ellipse orbit perpendicular to the surface [31]. In addition to many theoretical studies, a number of authors have dealt with the issue of vibration attenuation in practice [32; 33; 34].