Durability and variability of the acoustical performance of rubberized road surfaces

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Source characterization guidelines for noise mapping of port areas

Maritime transport for both passengers and freight is continuously increasing and, consequently, the global attention toward its sustainability is growing. Ships offer advantages in terms of environmental impact compared to other transportation systems but the increasing traffic volume is expected to increase pollutants. Noise produced in port areas has been neglected for too long, until the INTERREG Maritime programme Italy-France 2014\u20132020 has brought to light how citizen complaints are emerging for some of the main ports in the Mediterranean. However, port noise prevention and management is difficult as knowledge on specific sources is very limited in the literature. Furthermore, on field measurements are difficult to be performed given the complexity of the port area, where multiple types of sound emitters mix and confuse each other. Noise maps represent the first important step in order to align ports to the requirements set by the Environmental Noise Directive to the transportation infrastructures. Once computed, they are an excellent tool supporting port management towards the reduction of citizens\u2019 noise exposure while ensuring traffic growth. The present paper reports a guideline for the characterization of noise sources needed as inputs for the noise maps, as developed in the framework of the INTERREG Maritime programme Italy-France 2014\u20132020. On the basis of the current state of the art, a procedure has been elaborated for different categories of noise sources acting in port, ranging from stationary to moving ships, from mooring operations to loading/unloading operations, from industrial activities to road and railway traffic

Airborne Sound Power Levels and Spectra of Noise Sources in Port Areas

Airborne port noise has historically suffered from a lack of regulatory assessment compared to other transport infrastructures. This has led to several complaints from citizens living in the urban areas surrounding ports, which is a very common situation, especially in countries facing the Mediterranean sea. Only in relatively recent years has an effort been made to improve this situation, which has resulted in a call for and financing of numerous international cooperation research projects, within the framework of programs such as EU FP7, H2020, ENPI-CBC MED, LIFE, and INTERREG. These projects dealt with issues and aspects of port noise, which is an intrinsically tangled problem, since several authorities and companies operate within the borders of ports, and several different noise sources are present at the same time. In addition, ship classification societies have recently recognized the problem and nowadays are developing procedures and voluntary notations to assess the airborne noise emission from marine vessels. The present work summarizes the recent results of research regarding port noise sources in order to provide a comprehensive database of sources that can be easily used, for example, as an input to the noise mapping phase, and can subsequently prevent citizens' exposure to noise

A procedure for the assessment of wind turbine noise

The noise assessment at the receivers due to wind turbines in operation is usually performed through outdoor measurements. Background noise and wind turbines noise (WTN) are related to wind speed and both contribute to the overall measured noise levels (environmental noise). Nevertheless, the relation between noise and wind speed is not easily predictable, especially when the wind farms are installed in hilly terrains, where the wind shear is truly remarkable. In Italy and in other countries, this kind of assessment is even more difficult to perform due to the national regulations that require to compute the difference between environmental and background noise levels with the same weather conditions. Thus, to get a reliable and approved measure of the residual noise it would be necessary to turn off the wind farm. This work suggests a technical procedure to simultaneously estimate the immission and the residual noise components measured nearby a wind farm when the residual noise is mainly generated by wind. This allows the evaluation of the noise impact produced by operational wind farms, without requiring the farm shut down. The method aims to be fairly straightforward, thus maintaining the required scientific basis to be used as an assessment procedure by consultants and public bodies

Guidelines for noise monitoring systems in port area

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, maritime transportation offers a significant advantage compared to the other transport infrastructure, especially for long range distances. However, the estimation of its noise emission has been poor, with a consequent underestimation of the impact on citizens. The causes are probably the lower level of know-how on port noise compared to other noise sources and the high level of complexity that port areas have in terms of the number of different noise sources and interaction with the other main transportation infrastructures. Therefore, ports represent a serious challenge in a noise management standpoint. An effective noise monitoring is helpful to identify noise limits exceedings of the port areas and to plan mitigation measures if needed. Having a port noise monitoring system is also useful for improving the citizen involvement and awareness. Under the hood of the INTERREG Marittimo-Maritime Program, the present work draws up the specifications for integrated noise monitoring networks to be installed in the ports involved in the projects

Analysis of a vehicle-mounted self-stabilized p-u probe as a continuous spatial acoustic impedance measuring system for studying road surfaces

The knowledge of the acoustic impedance of a material allows to calculate its acoustic absorption. Furthermore, it can also be linked to some of the material's structural and physical proprieties by means of adequate models. However, while measuring the acoustic impedance of pavement samples in laboratory conditions can be usually achieved by using high accuracy equipment, such as the impedance tube, a complete in-situ evaluation of the paving results less accurate than the laboratory one and is extremely time consuming, enough to make a full scale implementation of in-situ evaluations practically impossible. Such a system would be necessary for evaluating the homogeneity and the correct laying of a road surface, which is proven to be directly linked to its acoustic emission properties. In the presented work, a measurement instrument fixable to a moving laboratory, such as a vehicle, is studied to overcome the issues that afflict in-situ measurements and thus allowing a continuous spatial characterization of a given pavement and a direct evaluation of the surface's quality. A calibration method will be shown, together with the evaluation of the performances of the system as an acoustic measure instrument. © INTER-NOISE 2019 MADRID - 48th International Congress and Exhibition on Noise Control Engineering. All Rights Reserved