Updated: 28-04-2017
Introduction
Health effects due to urban noise pollution are of growing concern. Noise reaches our residential areas by local traffic as well as from distant sources, as from highways, rail, airplane traffic and wind turbines. To combat these problems in a sustainable way, engineers in the field of environmental acoustics work with urban planners to develop solutions based on experience, measurements and calculations. Acousticians involved in research constantly look to assist engineers and urban planners in creating better living standards for the people. In this context, two acousticians – myself and PhD student Sai Trikootam, from my team at TU Eindhoven, are involved in a national NWO project Tools to tackle environmental health problems. In this project, we develop new methods to predict urban sound propagation in an accurate. In particular, these methods are capable of including the effect of meteorological conditions on noise levels at our buildings. The methods can be used to predict for what weather conditions we hear the distant highway, for example. This can then be used for better solutions to reduce the noise. These prediction methods need experimental data to validate their applicability to real life scenarios. In this context, a long-term noise measurement campaign, spanning over one year, is planned to be conducted, to predict the influence of wind on noise propagation. This measurement campaign is unique worldwide, as it is the first campaign where we will show how strong weather effects are on urban sound propagation.
Example of calculation of sound propagation over an urban area (carried out by TU Eindhoven).
Measurement plan
Areas have been selected with a dominant noise source. This makes it easier to evaluate the effect of meteorological conditions on noise levels, and also easier to reproduce the scenarios by numerical models. The three measurement sites are shown below and a description can be found for the Railway near Acht, the A50 highway near Son and the St. Trudo church Eindhoven. For each area, multiple microphone locations will be selected. One microphone would be closest to the source, to monitor the power from the sound sources and others will be located at increasing distances from the source in the same direction to observe the meteorological effects. The campaign is planned to start in June, 2017 and end in June, 2018. For its successful execution, this campaign needs residents to contribute by allowing us to install a microphone close to their residence (see below for participation).More information on the installation of the microphone can be found here. We are grateful for the municipality of Eindhoven who are supporting us in our work.
Results
After the measurements have started, we will post intermediate results of our measurement campaign on this page.
Contact form
If you are living in one of the three residential areas shown in the aerial photos (see above) and are willing to participate in our research, please fill your contact information below and you will hear from us!
Building Acoustics TU/e 