AN APPROACH FOR DESIGN OF NOISE BARRIERS ON FLYOVERS IN URBAN AREAS IN INDIA

Author(s)

Arvind Kumar Shukla - Civil Engineering Department, Institute of Engineering and Technology, Sitapur Road, Lucknow-226016, India -

Abstract

Transport is a significant, often major source of environmental pollution consisting of noise and air. Noise pollution has become a major concern for communities living in the vicinity of urban roads and major highway corridors. In view of increasing noise levels along highways it has become essential to reduce the intensity of noise to acceptable limit by constructing noise barrier. To study the existing noise levels in the urban areas due to movement of vehicles, the entire city of Lucknow has been divided in different zones on the basis of different land use. Effect of other factors like type of terrain, speed of traffic, cross section of roads and traffic composition has also been considered during noise data analysis. In this paper noise levels on the fly over in front of Engineering College (IET Lucknow UP India) has been taken for study and a noise barrier for this location has been designed for predicted noise levels worked out using modified FHWA model. This model makes use of traffic data like volume, speed composition, slope, ground cover etc. A program in EXCEL was developed to work out barrier height using traffic and road geometry data. The height of noise barrier to reduce the noise level from 63.79 db to 55 db was found as 4.2 meters above the floor level of flyover.