Noise Assessment during Motor Race Events: New Approach and Innovative Indicators

Abstract

Motorsport races significantly affect, on a local scale, noise pollution even if they do not represent the majority of its contribution, which is a prerogative of road transportation, railways, airports, and industries. Nevertheless, such noise emissions surely affect the well-being of inhabitants in the surrounding area of the circuit. In fact, during a motor race event, vehicles produce high noise emissions while on tests, qualifying, and race sessions. Since noise indicators commonly used in national regulations are computed over fixed times, it is challenging to properly assess the total noise emission and immission at the receivers during such events. Moreover, in literature, only a few works can be found assessing this specific issue, and consequently, there’s also a lack of appropriate methods to properly measure the global noise emission of each event. In this contribution, the authors report the characterization of noise emission during motor race events by using two new acoustic indicators, namely LEL (Lap Equivalent Level) and REL (Race Equivalent Level) starting from noise data collected on different points along a racing circuit. Measurements show that the REL tends to stabilize its value during a race, suggesting that its modelling can be achieved only based on the average LEL and the number of vehicles participating in a race. These indicators will allow predicting the total noise emission at a certain receiver of a motor race event by knowing the number and type of cars involved, without using the duration of the race itself.