Title: Development and evaluation of roadside barriers to attenuate road traffic noise
Abstract: As part of a continuing program of investigations into roadside traffic noise barrier optimisation, the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) funded a research and development study to develop and evaluate several full size prototype barrier designs. Of particular interest to this study was a design known as a Random Edge Profile Barrier since there was a body of published evidence which indicated that a barrier of this type can cause a substantial degradation of the noise diffracted over the barrier edge. As a consequence, it has been suggested that such barriers are capable of providing improved traffic noise attenuation compared to conventional barriers. The present study involved an empirical evaluation of a prototype Random Edge Profile Barrier and the comparison of its performance with that of conventional barriers and also with that which is known as a T-Top barrier. In total four barriers types were constructed alongside a major rural freeway in NSW and were 80m long by either 2.4m or 3.0m high. A substantial body of empirical data were collected at various receiver locations in front of, behind and adjacent to each barrier. Analyses of these data showed that for the receiver locations investigated, the random edge barrier out-performed the conventional barrier of the same nominal height for most frequencies associated with broadband tyre/road noise. The T-Top barrier was found to perform the best for frequencies greater than 3.15 kHz whilst the conventional barrier offered the most practical solution for attenuation of low frequency noise.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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