An approach for design of noise barriers on flyovers in urban areas in India

Transport is a significant, often major source of noise and air environmental pollution. 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 an acceptable limit by constructing noise barriers. To study the existing noise levels in urban areas due to movement of vehicles, the entire city of Lucknow has been divided into different zones on the basis of differing land use. Effects of other factors such as 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 the Engineering College (IET Lucknow UP India) was studied and a noise barrier for this location was designed for predicted noise levels using a modified FHWA model. This model makes use of traffic data such as 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 a noise barrier to reduce the noise level from 63.79 db to 55 db was found to be 4.2 meters above the floor level of flyover.