OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING FOR TRAFFIC NOISE PREDICTION ON NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

Abstract

Traffic engineers are currently concerned with the environmental problem due to traffic noise pollution, which is produced by the traffic flow. In India traffic noise pollution is becoming a matter of concern in sub urban area. To control and predict the noise due to road traffic in urban and sub urban area, several efforts have been made by different countries. However, efforts made in India in this field is limited and currently there is no such analytical tool available to predict traffic noise and envolve relevant abatement measures. Generation of Noise is depends upon the type of vehicle, type of engine used, quality of tyre, road surface, distance of source and receiver from the roadways and position of the barrier. All these parameters contribute separately to the equivalent noise level. For predicting the effect of these parameters, FHWA model suggest several adjustments such as flow adjustment, finite roadway adjustment, distance adjustment, grade adjustment, shielding adjustment and barrier adjustment. In this dissertation, a software has been developed, called OOP-NP, which is based on the noise model, developed at Centre of Transportation Engineering (COTE) under the Research Scheme T-1 sponsored by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Govt. of India entitled "Development of Comprehensive Highway Noise Model and Design of Noise Barrier". This model contain six categories of the vehicles; category-1 has Car, Jeep, Van, category-2 has Scooter, category-3 has Light Commercial Vehicles and Mini Bus, category-4 has Bus, category-5 has Truck and category-6 has Tractor and Trailer. There are separate equations for each category of the vehicle for mean noise emission level on different type of pavement such as concrete pavement and bituminous pavement and apply different types of adjustment such as finite roadway adjustment, distance adjustment, flow adjustment, grade iii adjustment and barrier adjustment. It also provides details about variation of noise adjustment and equivalent noise with receiver distance, variation of noise with speed and flow of traffic and effect of barrier on noise. The main features of this package are: it is developed in C++ with graphics and compatible to Turbo C++ and BORLAND C++ platform. It has also a user-friendly environment and input data are entered through either keyboard or through file specified by user and output of programme is stored in file. This software has been used for detailed parametric analysis. This parametric analysis helps to understand the relationship between traffic noise and various independent variables including in the model. Traffic noise depends on the flow of vehicles, speed of vehicle, and it also depends upon the geometry of the road, and receiver distance. It is found form the study, that heavy vehicles like Tractor and Trailer have a significant effect on the Equivalent noise, and lightweight vehicles have no significant effect. It has also been found that noise decreases with receiver distance. If barrier has been constructed along the roadside, it also reduces the noise.