scholarly journals Method of measuring the acoustic characteristics of traffic flows in urban environments

When examining doctors ' workplaces, it was found that traffic noise inside the premises exceeds sanitary standards. For medical institutions, the sanitary standards are 50 dBA, and for fullscale measurements, they were 60-63 dBA. Traffic noise levels have a maximum at low frequencies (31.5 Hz) and a minimum at high frequencies (16,000 Hz).

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12561
Author(s):  
Ablenya Grangeiro de Barros ◽  
Jarl K. Kampen ◽  
Cedric Vuye

Low-noise thin asphalt layers (TALs) are a feasible solution to mitigate road traffic noise in urban environments. Nevertheless, the impacts of this type of noise intervention are reported mostly regarding noise levels, while non-acoustic aspects influencing the population perception are still little-known. This study investigates the implementation of TALs in two streets of Antwerp, Belgium. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured via noise modelling and acoustic measurements of road traffic noise. A reduction of 2.8 dB in noise exposure was observed in Lden and Lnight, while SPB measurements showed decreases up to 5.2 dB on the roadside. The subjective impacts of the TALs were evaluated via self-administered surveys and compared to results from control streets. The annoyance indicators were positively impacted by the TALs implementation, resulting in annoyance levels similar or lower than in the control streets. The TALs did not impact the reported physical complaints, sleep quality, and comfort level to perform activities.


2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vikrant Tyagi ◽  
Krishan Kumar ◽  
V.K. Jain

Abstract Noise measurements have been carried out at eleven different sites located in three prominent cities of the Tarai region of India to evaluate the effectiveness of vegetation belts in reducing traffic noise along the roadsides. Attenuation per doubling of distance has been computed for each site and excess attenuation at different 1/3 octave frequencies has been estimated. The average excess attenuation is found to be approximately 15 dB over the low frequencies (200 Hz to 500 Hz) and between 15 dB to 20 dB over the high frequencies (8 kHz to 12.5 kHz). Over the critical middle frequencies (1-4 kHz), the average excess attenuation (between 10-15 dB) though not as high, is still significant, with a number of sites showing an excess attenuation of 15 dB or more at 1 kHz. The results indicate that sufficiently dense vegetation belts along the roadsides may prove as effective noise barriers and significant attenuation may be achieved over the critical middle frequencies (1-4 kHz).


Author(s):  
Zhuang Li

Traffic noise is a major noise source in the study of environmental noise. Various noise generation mechanisms depict different spectral features. Some are wide-band noise, such as engine knocks; some have signature frequencies, such as gear transmissions; and some are in a certain frequency region, such as tire/road noise. These spectral features affect the façade design of a building in order to achieve sufficient exterior noise insulation and satisfactory interior noise due to the traffic noise. ISO standard 11819-1 specifies the measurement procedure of statistical pass-by tests. There are three ranges of vehicle speed: slow, medium, and fast. However, it requires that the vehicle must maintain constant speed when passing by the test point. Unfortunately, a vehicle tends to generate higher noise when accelerating, especially at low frequencies. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish the noise levels at an intersection versus middle-points of the road between two intersections. Presumably, the traffic noise levels at an intersection would be higher. This research measured the traffic noise at various locations of different speed limits. Statistical analyses were conducted to compare the spectra at these locations. This is also an effort to refine the noise map.


Author(s):  
Herni Halim ◽  
◽  
Nur Fatin Najiyah Hamid ◽  
Mohamad Firdaus Mahamad Yusob ◽  
Nur Atiqah Mohamad Nor ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Philip James

Elements of the physical aspects of urban environments determine which micro-organisms, plants, and animals live in urban environments. In this chapter, climate, air, water, soil, noise, and light are discussed. Urban environments are affected by the climate of the region in which they are located, and in turn and create their own, distinctive urban climate. Air, water, and soil are all affected by urbanization. Pollution of these elements is common. High noise levels and artificial light at night (ALAN—a new phenomenon) are both strongly associated with urban environments. Details of both are discussed. The discussion in this chapter provides a foundation for further exploration of the diversity of life in urban environments and for later exploration of how organisms adapt to urban living, which will be discussed in Parts II and III.


2015 ◽  
Vol 804 ◽  
pp. 25-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanlop Harnnarongchai ◽  
Kantima Chaochanchaikul

The sound absorbing efficiency of natural rubber (NR) foam is affected by the cell morphology of foam. Potassium oleate (K-oleate) and sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) were used as blowing agents to create open-cell foam. Amounts of the blowing agent were varied from 0.5 to 8.0 part per hundred of rubber (phr) to evaluate cell size and number of foam cell as well as sound adsorption coefficient of NR foam. The NR foam specimens were prepared using mould and air-circulating oven for vulcanizing and foaming processes. The results indicated that K-oleate at 2.0 phr and NaHCO3 at 0.5 phr led to form NR foam with the smallest cell size and the largest number of foam cell. At low frequencies, the optimum sound adsorption coefficient of NR foam was caused by filling K-oleate 2 phr. However, that of NR foam at high frequencies was provided by 0.5 phr-NaHCO3 addition.


1993 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Cullen ◽  
M. J. Cinnamond

The relationship between diabetes and senbsorineural hearing loss has been disputed. This study compares 44 insulin-dependent diabetics with 38 age and sex matched controls. All had pure tone and speech audiometry performed, with any diabetics showing sensorineural deafness undergoing stapedial reflecx decat tests. In 14 diabetics stapedial reflex tests showed no tone decay in any patient, but seven showed evidence of recruitment. Analysis of vaiance showed the diabetics to be significantly deafer than the control population.The hearing loss affected high frequencies in both sexes, but also low frequencies in the male. Speech discrimination scores showed no differences. Further analysis by sex showed the males to account for most of the differences. Analysys of the audiograms showered mostly a high tone loss. Finally duration of disbetes, insulin dosage and family history of diabtes were not found to have a significant effect on threshold.


Author(s):  
Jerome E. Manning

Abstract Statistical energy analysis provides a technique to predict acoustic and vibration levels in complex dynamic systems. The technique is most useful for broad-band excitation at high frequencies where many modes contribute to the response in any given frequency band. At mid and low frequencies, the number of modes contributing to the response may be quite small. In this case SEA predictions show large variability from measured data and may not be useful for vibroacoustic design. This paper focuses on the use of measured data to improve the accuracy of the predictions. Past work to measure the SEA coupling and damping loss factors has not been successful for a broad range of systems that do not have light coupling. This paper introduces a new hybrid SEA technique that combines measured mobility functions with analytical SEA predictions. The accuracy of the hybrid technique is shown to be greatly improved at mid and low frequencies.


Author(s):  
Gundula B. Runge ◽  
Al Ferri ◽  
Bonnie Ferri

This paper considers an anytime strategy to implement controllers that react to changing computational resources. The anytime controllers developed in this paper are suitable for cases when the time scale of switching is in the order of the task execution time, that is, on the time scale found commonly with sporadically missed deadlines. This paper extends the prior work by developing frequency-weighted anytime controllers. The selection of the weighting function is driven by the expectation of the situations that would require anytime operation. For example, if the anytime operation is due to occasional and isolated missed deadlines, then the weighting on high frequencies should be larger than that for low frequencies. Low frequency components will have a smaller change over one sample time, so failing to update these components for one sample period will have less effect than with the high frequency components. An example will be included that applies the anytime control strategy to a model of a DC motor with deadzone and saturation nonlinearities.


2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (10) ◽  
pp. 1645-1656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail M. Skofronick-Jackson ◽  
James R. Wang

Abstract Profiles of the microphysical properties of clouds and rain cells are essential in many areas of atmospheric research and operational meteorology. To enhance the understanding of the nonlinear and underconstrained relationships between cloud and hydrometeor microphysical profiles and passive microwave brightness temperatures, estimations of cloud profiles for an anvil region, a convective region, and an updraft region of an oceanic squall were performed. The estimations relied on comparisons between radiative transfer calculations of incrementally estimated microphysical profiles and concurrent dual-altitude wideband brightness temperatures from the 22 February 1993 flight during the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment. The wideband observations (10–220 GHz) are necessary for estimating cloud profiles reaching up to 20 km. The low frequencies enhance the rain and cloud water profiles, and the high frequencies are required to detail the higher-altitude ice microphysics. A microphysical profile was estimated for each of the three regions of the storm. Each of the three estimated profiles produced calculated brightness temperatures within ∼10 K of the observations. A majority of the total iterative adjustments were to the estimated profile’s frozen hydrometeor characteristics and were necessary to match the high-frequency calculations with the observations. This requirement indicates a need to validate cloud-resolving models using high frequencies. Some difficulties matching the 37-GHz observation channels on the DC-8 and ER-2 aircraft with the calculations simulated at the two aircraft heights (∼11 km and 20 km, respectively) were noted, and potential causes were presented.


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