The revised environmental quality standards for noise have adopted
LAeq as an evaluation index in place of
L50 which has been used for a long time. The new standards divide the ‘areas facing roads’ into the ones adjacent to arterial roads and the others, and give different target values to each of them. Therefore calculating
LAeq of road traffic noise at the positions behind a building becomes increasingly important. This paper presents simple methods for calculating sound pressure level at all the receivers behind a building of rectangular cross-section directly facing the arterial road. The methods which apply the Maekawa's chart to calculation of sound attenuation by a virtual thin barrier take account of both sound diffraction and reflection, meet the reciprocity and secure the continuity of calculated values in all the combinations of positions of sound sources and receivers. The sound pressure levels at the receivers are calculated by summing the contributions from the paths propagating over the top and the sides of the building. The validity of the methods presented here is verified by comparing the values by the methods with those calculated on a basis of wave acoustics and with those measured through model experiments.
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