Analysis of Traffic Noise Pollution Using Siemens Tecnomatix Plant Simulation

Abstract

This paper considers a simulation-based tool for the prediction of roadside noise pollution. A special feature of the tool is that its core is a standard manufacturing simulation software – Tecnomatix Plant Simulation by Siemens. The tool uses standard elementary object classes of Plant Simulation such as path, vehicle, method etc., and provides a powerful and highly parameterisable environment for analysing the noise pollution by traffic flows. It possesses a high flexibility of model programming and is open for extensions and adjustments to new calculation methods. The infrastructure modeling facilities are essentially independent of the noise computation algorithms and thus can be used with various tool-internal or external numerical calculation components. As a result of earlier computational studies, a set of functional interdependencies of flow parameters and model settings have been obtained, and methods for calculating noise indicators have been adapted for their implementation in embedded languages of simulation tools. As a result of the programming-experimental study, a "Traffic Noise Tool" (TNT) software module has been developed. TNT allows to analyse the impact of traffic flow characteristics (traffic intensity, traffic flow by vehicle categories, and traffic mode in each track etc.) and of road infrastructure (number and carrying capacity of the cracks, additional distance between opposite directions, availability of noise protection devices, etc.) on the noise pollution of the roadside environment. During the simulation&calculation process, the noise characteristics of the individual vehicles are recorded and displayed by diagrams, and so is the equivalent overall noise level at a given monitoring point. The results of this study can be used in the practice.