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Quantifying the influence of transmission path characteristics on urban railway noise

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Abstract

Every ambient noise study employs the source-path-receiver structure to explore the overall behaviour of sound. Noise levels are affected by changes in distance, intervening barriers, and atmospheric conditions along the transmission path between the source and the receiver. The objective of this study is to quantify the influence of transmission path characteristics for a realistic time-varying moving line source. In this context, railway noise was considered to explore the variance of noise in an urban setting over a variety of measuring distances, including 25, 50, 100, and 200 m, with variables such as air temperature, humidity, and wind condition. The data corresponding to 106 trains was collected for analysis, and it was observed that the effect of the wind was more significant for larger distances between the source and the receiver. When the sound levels were measured in two opposite wind directions, a considerable noise level difference was observed. For every 1 m/s increase in wind speed, within a distance of 50 m, the average sound attenuation induced by the upwind phenomena was 0.2 dBA. The impact of air temperature changes on received sound level from a moving source was insignificant within the range of temperatures considered in the study. The effect of humidity is less at shorter distances but at larger distances, increasingly attenuates noise levels. Analysis of variance was performed on the selected variables to determine whether the means of each group were significantly different from each other and found that train speed had a more significant impact on railway noise compared to other parameters.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by Shri Y. Yogananda Babu, Deputy Chief Engineer, South Central Railway Zone of Indian Railways, for his support in collecting train noise data. The authors acknowledge the support provided by the research scholars of the National Institute of Technology, Warangal, Telangana, India, in data collection.

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The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Warangal, Telangana, 506004, India

    Boddu Sudhir Kumar & Venkaiah Chowdary

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  1. Boddu Sudhir Kumar
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  2. Venkaiah Chowdary
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Conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis and investigation, and writing—original draft preparation have been done by Boddu Sudhir Kumar. Writing—review and editing and supervision of the work were done by Venkaiah Chowdary.

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Correspondence to Boddu Sudhir Kumar.

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Kumar, B.S., Chowdary, V. Quantifying the influence of transmission path characteristics on urban railway noise. Environ Monit Assess 195, 996 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11557-3

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