Abstract
Urban sound propagation is influenced by meteorological conditions, causing refraction and scattering of sound waves. An experimental study on the effect of meteorology on urban sound propagation has not been addressed yet on long-term and long-range scales. For the first time, this paper presents an approach to measure the wind effect on urban sound propagation from an uncontrolled sound source. The approach is applied to a location in Eindhoven (the Netherlands), with church bells as the source of sound. Sound is continuously measured, downwind from the sound source according to the prevailing wind direction up to 527 m from the source, and during a period of 5 months. Results of this measurement campaign show an increase of the sound pressure level of 0.4 dB, 0.8 dB, and 1.9 dB across three measurement positions per 1 m/s increase of the wind velocity over 1/3rd octave bands. Effects are stronger for lower frequencies and increases for further microphone positions. Possible future improvements of the experimental approach are discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 561-570 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Building and Environment |
| Volume | 149 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2019 |
Funding
The authors are grateful to lab technician Wout van Bommel for providing technical support in setting up and maintaining the measuring equipment in all the positions of measurements. This work is part of the research programme “ Tools to tackle environmental health problems ” with project number 14275 , which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research .
Keywords
- Downward refraction
- Environmental noise
- Meteorological effects
- Urban sound propagation