Characterizing noise barriers: SOPRANOISE half-term progress report

SOPRANOISE targets simplified assessment of the in-situ intrinsic acoustic performances of road/railway noise barriers. This paper presents its half-term progress. The research is divided in 5 Work Packages, the scientific ones being WP2 to WP5. WP2 is about establishing a State Of the Art (SoA) on the characterization of the intrinsic performances: it is now finished and presented in 2 other papers by Conter and Fuchs. WP3 is about in-situ inspection tools: based on a review/questionnaire, an inspection protocol has been developed allowing simplified assessments mainly based on visual inspections and characterization of possible defects; WP3 is now in its final testing phase. WP4 is about designing a brand new “quick and safe methods” that could take place “in between” the inspection tools and the standardized EN 1793-5 and -6; the research and development phases of WP4 are now finished, while its validation along highways is now scheduled. Finally, WP5 is about the use of noise barriers in the European market and the final report: a synthesis on the physical behavior of noise barriers and the physical significance of the test methods has been done, as well a SoA on the effective use of noise barriers; the results will be presented.