TRAFFIC NOISE PREDICTION FOR RURAL HIGHWAYS

Abstract

Noise is one of the environmental pollutants that is encountered in daily life. In view of the rapid infrastructural development it is esential to study highway noise w.r.t. various causative factors. Most of the countries, keeping in view the alarming increase in environmental noise pollution, have given certain permissible noise standards. In India. IRC and BIS have given the permissible noise standards. The level of sound is expressed in terms of the logarithm of the ratio of its rms (root mean square) pressure to a very small reference pressure (2x10-5N/m2). The unit used is the decibel (dB) defined as 20 times the log of this ratio. There are certain Traffic noise parameters like A weighted noise level, Percentile noise level, Octave bands, One-third octave bands Traffic noise index, Noise pollution level etc. Two instruments have been used for noise measurement : NL 2100B and 2260 Invetigators. Out of which the latter one is a continuous noise recorder. A number of noise prediction models have been_developed—over—the-pa-Sr -30 years that attempted to model the highway conditions under study, These models differ in some respect in detail but overall, the methodology is similar.