The influence of balcony depth and parapet form on the acoustical performance of building facades close to roadways have been investigated. Various depths and two inclinations of parapet have been modelled on an 8 floor building. Pyramid ray-tracing simulations and scale model measurements have been carried out. The predicted and measured A-weighted sound pressure level reductions over the balcony back wall and in free field conditions have been compared. The results have been used to derive empirical equations for predicting protection as a function of geometrical parameters. The protection obtained by various parapet depths ranges between 4 and 8 dB(A), while an additional protection of between 0.5 and 4 dB(A) can be obtained by inclining the parapets.

International audienceThis study presents the acoustic performance off tall building facades closed to roadway due to one of balcony configurations, namely ceiling, with an inclined form in terms of traffic noise reduction. Three inclined angles are tested (5,10, and 15°) with different balcony depths by using a Pyramid Tracing model developed by A. Farina. The results in terms of A-weighted sound pressure level reduction are expressed in free field into the balcony back wall. The protection level, defined as the difference in noise levels before and after inserting the proposed balcony form, has been used to assess the reduction offered by that configuration. A maximum reduction due to using these forms is obtained at higher floors and at balcony of 2 m depths and more. As a consequence of simulation results, it is found that the prediction of protection levels from 10th to 15th floor can be calculated from an empirical equation

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of visual ambiences (visualscape) onto an urban pedestrian pathway. This work takes place within the interdisciplinary research project called Ambioflux, dealing with the sustainable mobility issues in the city. We add to the spatial semantic layer GDMS (Generic Datasource Management System) an innovative method based on partial isovists fields in order to compute the visibility of the pedestrian all along his pathway. This method allows " concatenating " several partial visibility polygons in order to represents the visual perception of the pedestrian. After a brief overview of the visibility analysis context, we justify the need of a specific semantic tool to develop the type of dynamics visual analysis we focus on. The remainder of this paper is dedicated to the methodology of the mobile pedestrian pathway's visual fingerprint characterization using the spatial formalism already described. At last, we present a use case based on a real city tour so as to identify the best rotation's direction from the visual perception point of view