A Study of the Use of Balconies in Screening Road Traffic Noise

摘要

This paper describes a prediction scheme pertaining to the propagation of traffic noise from a road into a balcony and explores the screening effect of a balcony. Due to the lack of a practical model, a new methodology is developed that focuses on the prediction of traffic noise levels inside a balcony by incorporating geometrical acoustic principle into a well-known prediction model - The Calculation of Road Traffic Noise (CRTN). The source level of road traffic noise is obtained as per the CRTN methodology. However, a revised scheme is proposed for segmentation of roads and different prediction methods are used to calculate noise levels for a receiver at an illuminated zone and at a shadow zone inside a balcony. Field measurements in different balcony types have been conducted to validate the proposed methodology. The insertion loss of a balcony has been used to assess the effectiveness of a balcony in screening road traffic noise. It is found that the predicted insertion loss agrees reasonably well with field measurements. In general, a balcony can provide quite considerable screening effect under favorable conditions. The results of this study may stimulate the developers and architects to use balconies of suitable design for the protection of dwellings from road traffic noise.