gang Wei

Urban background noise mapping: the general model

Surveys show that inhabitants of dwellings exposed to high noise levels benefit from having access to a quiet side. However, current practice in noise prediction often underestimates the noise levels at a shielded facade. Multiple reflections between facades in street canyons and inner yards are commonly neglected and facades are approximated as perfectly flat surfaces yielding only specular reflection. In addition, sources at distances much larger than normally taken into account in noise maps might still contribute significantly. Since one of the main reasons for this is computational burden, an efficient engineering model for the diffraction of the sound over the roof tops is proposed, which considers multiple reflections, variation in building height, canyon width, facade roughness and different roof shapes. The model is fitted on an extensive set of full-wave numerical calculations of canyon-to-canyon sound propagation with configurations matching the distribution of streets and building geometries in a typical historically grown European city. This model allows calculating the background noise in the shielded areas of a city, which could then efficiently be used to improve existing noise mapping calculations. The model was validated by comparison to long-term measurements at 9 building facades whereof 3 were at inner yards in the city of Ghent, Belgium. At shielded facades, a strong improvement in prediction accuracy is obtained.

A model of sound scattering by atmospheric turbulence for use in noise mapping calculations

Sound scattering due to atmospheric turbulence limits the noise reduction in shielded areas. An engineering model is presented, aimed to predict the scattered level for general noise mapping purposes including sound propagation between urban canyons. Energy based single scattering for homogeneous and isotropic turbulence following the Kolmogorov model is assumed as a starting point and a saturation based on the von Karman model is used as a first-order multiple scattering approximation. For a single shielding obstacle the scattering model is used to calculate a large dataset as function of the effective height of the shielding obstacle and its distances to source and receiver. A parameterisation of the dataset is used when calculating the influence of single or double canyons, including standardised air attenuation rates as well as facade absorption and Fresnel weighting of the multiple facade reflections. Assuming a single point source, an aver aging over three receiver positions and that each ground reflection causes energy doubling, the final engineering model is formulated as a scattered level for a shielding building without canyon plus a correction term for the effect of a single or a double canyon, assuming a flat rooftop of the shielding building. Input parameters are, in addition to geometry and sound frequency, the strengths of velocity and temperature turbulence.

Urban background noise mapping : the multiple-reflection correction term

Mapping of road traffic noise in urban areas according to standardized engineering calculation methods systematically results in an underestimation of noise levels at areas shielded from direct exposure to noise, such as inner yards. In most engineering methods, road traffic lanes are represented by point sources and noise levels are computed utilizing point-to-point propagation paths. For a better prediction of noise levels in shielded urban areas, an extension of engineering methods by an attenuation term Acan has been proposed, including multiple reflections of the urban environment both in the source and in the receiver area. The present work has two main contributions for the ease of computing Acan. Firstly, it is shown by numerical calculations that Acan may be divided into independent source and receiver environment terms, As and Ar. Based on an equivalent free field analogy, the distance dependence of these terms may moreover be expressed analytically. Secondly, an analytical expression is proposed to compute As and Ar for 3D configurations from using 2D configurations only. The expression includes dependence of the street width-to-height ratio, the difference in building heights and the percentage of facade openings in the horizontal plane. For the expression to be valid, the source should be separated from the receiver environment by at least four times the street width.

Simplified analytical model for sound level prediction at shielded urban locations involving multiple diffraction and reflections.

Accurate and efficient prediction of the sound field in shadow zones behind obstacles is a challenging task but essential to produce urban noise maps. A simplified method is presented to predict sound levels at shielded urban locations, including multi-edge diffraction over successive buildings and multiple reflections between parallel façades. The model is essentially based on Pierces diffraction theory, where the Fresnel Integral is approximated by trigonometric functions for efficient evaluation, and parameterized for urban environments. The model has been validated for idealized urban configurations by comparing to the results of Pierces theory and a full-wave numerical method. In case of multi-edge diffraction over buildings in absence of a source or receiver canyon, deviations from the full-wave simulations are smaller than 2 dB for the octave bands with central frequencies ranging from 125 to 1000 Hz. However, larger errors are made when receivers are close to the extension line from the diffraction edge closest to the receiver. In case of combining the simplified multi-edge diffraction model with an efficient approach for including the series of mirror sources and mirror receivers, based on the Hurwitz-Lerch transcendent, this same accuracy is obtained.

Erratum: Urban background noise mapping: The general model (Acta Acustica united with Acustica (2014) 100 (1098-1111) DOI:10.3813/AAA.918789)

Erratum : Urban background noise mapping: The general model (Acta Acustica united with Acustica (2014) 100 (1098-1111) DOI:10.3813/AAA.918789)