Acoustic Barriers: Analytical Methods, Boundary Element Method and Experimental Verification

Abstract

The use of acoustic barriers has become a common solution to control and reduce the nuisance caused by transportation noise (e.g. highways, railroads, and aircraft). Acoustic barriers can be defined as any solid obstacle that blocks the straight line between sound source and receptor creating an acoustic shadow region behind. The precise prediction of acoustic barrier behaviour has been the goal of researchers, but the complexity of the phenomenon prevents generality. Many theoretical models are available but they are limited to particular cases. The main objective of this work is to carry out comparisons between the results obtained for the insertion loss using analytical methods of prediction, numerical methods using the Finite Elements Method (FEM) and Boundary Elements Method (BEM) and experimental measurements in the laboratory.