A Comparative Analysis of the Road Noise Immission Models

Road noise pollution is one of the most topical environmental issues for local authorities, under the circumstances of increasingly demanding legislation in this area. In this context, the use of road noise models is of particular importance - on the one hand, in the design of new road infrastructures - in order to assess the acoustic impact and avoid further passive noise protection measures that can be very costly, and, on the other hand, for the existing road networks, to minimize noise measurement campaigns only to the volume required to calibrate the model. After a brief presentation of the most commonly used road noise prediction models, a series of simulations were carried out using the Dutch 2002 software based on the British CoRTN model for different values of traffic characteristics on the road artery in front of Building T of the University of Pitesti. Immediate noise measurement at the level of the building, under the same road traffic conditions as in the simulation, confirms the veracity of the results obtained by means of simulation. Finally, a complex model is proposed for predicting the immission of road noise on the basis of road traffic and noise propagation characteristics, where, in the case of long and narrow road arteries, when traffic simulation is carried out at a macro level, the complex model is operable on the basis of already existing noise emission models.