Prediction of the Environmental Noise Level of Railway Cars Crossing a Concrete Bridge

Abstract

In the conventional model for the prediction of the railway environmental noise, one used an empirical formula of the total noise level at specific distances. Only a function of the distance to the source was also used to calculate the noise level near the railway bridges. However, the noise varies depending on the position of the receiver as well as the distance from the source especially at concrete bridges. In this paper, a noise propagation model in the railway concrete bridge was derived by considering the diffraction at the bridge deck and the ground effect and applying the ISO 9613-2 noise propagation model. We compared the predicted and measured values of environmental noise at a high-speed railway bridge, and it was confirmed that this prediction model gives relatively small errors.