Impact of Construction Faults on In Situ Airborne Sound Insulation of Noise Barriers

e steadily increasing amount of tra›c constitutes one of the largest noise sources in the environment. To keep the annoyance for people living close to heavily used roads as low as possible, noise reduction measures such as the erection of noise barriers are oŸen taken. e assessment of these noise reduction measures is regulated by a number of standards; the series EN ÔÞÀç for instance covers the topic "Road tra›c noise reducing devices - Test method for determining the acoustic performance". e problem forming the basis of this master´s thesis is the impact of construction faults on the acoustic properties of noise barriers. Typical construction faults are horizontal gaps that remain open between individual elements or holes that result through damages to the corners of elements prior to the installation. e sound transmission through these faults in noise barriers is examined numerically and experimentally. For the numerical treatment the boundary element method (BEM) that is especially suited for externally uncon ned problems is used. e experimental part consists of measurements according to the standard EN ÔÞÀç-â (from the EU project Adrienne) that are carried out at a noise barrier test facility. Finally the results obtained from the simulations and the measurements are compared with calculations according to the analytical model by G™“£u§±« [Ô¥]. ¥