The wind effect on sound propagation over urban areas: Predictions for generic urban sections

Hornikx, Maarten; Dohmen, Maud; Conen, K.; Hooff, T. van; Blocken, Bje Bert

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.08.041

Cited by 14 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The propagation of sound waves behaves in a very complex way depending on the geometry of the street canyon and the properties of its surfaces. Literature that examines sound propagation in street canyons in detail always refers to acoustic measurements or computer simulations (Hornikx and Forssén, 2009; Hornikx et al, 2018; Jang et al, 2015; Kang, 2002; Onaga and Rindel, 2007; Yu et al, 2019). Analytical calculation models reach their limits due to the many influencing factors.…”

Section: Evaluation Of Acoustic Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making model to assist building designers in the choice of superficial construction systems in urban areas

Dürr

Geissler

Hoffmann

2022

Journal of Building Physics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An enormous range of building materials that is almost impossible to keep track of is available. The trend toward building densification in cities continues apace. Coupled with climate change, a situation is emerging that poses ecological as well as economic risks in terms of living comfort in public, urban spaces. Building designers need help (tools) to be able to address a wide range of requirements within their planning. The development of the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) model BASK (engl. “Construction Materials for Cities in Climate Change”) is presented. The goal of the model is to assist building designers in determining surface materials for wall, ground and roof construction and help determine the best compromise between environmental, economic, and building practice criteria. Currently available criteria are heat stress, visual reflectance, CO2 equivalents, electricity production, retrofitability, sound absorption, construction costs, and life span. The criteria can be weighted by the designer, resulting in a customized ranking of construction systems that best meets the designer’s prioritized criteria. The design of BASK basically allows for an extension of the criteria. The version of BASK described in this paper includes 10 construction systems covering a wide range of construction types focused on walls. The tool requires technical data for materials considered in construction systems included, which are made available via a data base. The scope of construction systems can also be extended in the future. Based on the restricted set of construction systems the results of a sensitivity analysis and initial validation are given.

show abstract

Section: Evaluation Of Acoustic Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making model to assist building designers in the choice of superficial construction systems in urban areas

Dürr

Geissler

Hoffmann

2022

Journal of Building Physics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Considering the typical weather condition in Singapore: a sunny day in the tropics with low average wind speeds, buoyancy-driven turbulence induced by solar radiation is the most critical parameter that influences urban microclimate simulations [13][14][15][16] in which the core physical model is the wind-thermal interaction between wind dynamics and heat transfer on building and ground surfaces in the urban environment. Meanwhile, wind and thermal shear also impact the traffic noise levels in dense canopies [17,18]. Therefore, a coupled wind-thermal and noise propagation model is valuable to simulate and evaluate the thermal and acoustic environment in dense urban spaces for lower wind speed conditions [19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Outdoor environmental comfort evaluation for retail planning in a tropical business district using Integrated Environmental Modeller

Lai

Koh²,

Gopalan³

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research proposes a simulation-based assessment of outdoor thermal and acoustic comfort for a planned business urban district in Singapore for retail planning using a customized OpenFOAM-centric multi-physics environmental simulation platform called the Integrated Environmental Modeller (IEM). IEM was employed to simulate the coupled impacts of solar radiation on wind and air temperature and wind and air temperature effects on traffic noise propagation in the district on the equinox and solstice day of the hottest period. Using IEM simulation results, we computed the thermal and acoustic comfort acceptability indicators derived from local field studies’ results. The spatial distribution of environmental comfort acceptability indicators in the worst-case scenario can be used to distinguish the zones exposed to thermal or noise influence. The noise-affected zones are near the main roads and overlap a part of the thermal-affected area. The thermal-affected area is almost everywhere in the studied sites in the worst-case scenario. Having outdoor retail spaces with both poor thermal and acoustic comfort is not recommended if the thermal and acoustic comfort cannot be improved simultaneously. For the high-level retail planning, a simplified parametric analysis considering solar irradiance blockage and wind speed enhancements, is provided. Considering the worst-case scenario, ≥50% thermal acceptability can be achieved by blocking 54%-68% solar irradiance among the pedestrian thoroughfares and the retail spaces. Coupled together, blocking the solar irradiance and enhancing the wind speed can further improve thermal comfort locally. These results can guide the retail mix (e.g., al fresco restaurants, pop-up kiosks etc.) near high footfall areas and provide reference for future plans combining landscape and infrastructure, (e.g., trees with shelter walkaways, green walls with outdoor ventilation fans etc.) taking into account the environmental acceptability of people working in or visiting the tropical urban district.

show abstract

“…The urban canyon (UC), also known as the U-shaped street canyon, represents a typical modern dense high-rise city environment and highly distorts wind velocity and temperature profiles. Therefore, complex propagation scenarios could occur during sound propagation, such as standing waves with large amplitude oscillations within a narrow UC (Pelat et al, 2009) and insonification of terrain shadow zone with downward refraction (Hornikx et al, 2018). Another limitation of the work, which has not been pointed out by others yet, is that the authors presented the ray-path-tracing (RPT) equations and the GBT equations in a slightly inconsistent way.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient prediction of airborne noise propagation in a non-turbulent urban environment using Gaussian beam tracing method

Fuerkaiti

Casalino

Avallone

et al. 2023

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents a noise propagation approach based on the Gaussian beam tracing (GBT) method that accounts for multiple reflections over three-dimensional terrain topology and atmospheric refraction due to horizontal and vertical variability in wind velocity. A semi-empirical formulation is derived to reduce truncation error in the beam summation for receivers on the terrain surfaces. The reliability of the present GBT approach is assessed with an acoustic solver based on the finite element method (FEM) solutions of the convected wave equation. The predicted wavefields with the two methods are compared for different source-receiver geometries, urban settings, and wind conditions. When the beam summation is performed without the empirical formulation, the maximum difference is more than 40 dB; it drops below 8 dB with the empirical formulation. In the presence of wind, the direct and reflected waves can have different ray paths than those in a quiescent atmosphere, which results in less apparent diffraction patterns. A 17-fold reduction in computation time is achieved compared to the FEM solver. The results suggest that the present GBT acoustic propagation model can be applied to high-frequency noise propagation in urban environments with acceptable accuracy and better computational efficiency than full-wave solutions.

show abstract

The wind effect on sound propagation over urban areas: Predictions for generic urban sections

Cited by 14 publications

References 36 publications

Development of a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making model to assist building designers in the choice of superficial construction systems in urban areas

Development of a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making model to assist building designers in the choice of superficial construction systems in urban areas

Outdoor environmental comfort evaluation for retail planning in a tropical business district using Integrated Environmental Modeller

Efficient prediction of airborne noise propagation in a non-turbulent urban environment using Gaussian beam tracing method

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About