BARRIER EFFECTIVENESS VALIDATION

The primary goals of this project were to answer three specific questions: Are the barriers providing adequate protection for highway neighbors? Are the noise barriers that have been built in Florida performing as predicted? Is the new Federal Highway Administration Traffic Noise Model significantly better than STAMINA 2.0/2.1? To answer these questions, and fulfill the goals of this project, specific data were needed. These data were of two types: field data and computed data. The field data included measured sound levels, specific location geometrics, traffic counts, traffic speeds, weather data, and field notes of unusual occurrences. The computed data included prediction of sound levels at specific positions, calculation of insertion losses, shadow zone evaluations, overall trend analysis of the collected data, and comparative analysis of the measured versus modeled results. This report details the methods used, the data collection method, a description of the computer modeling, the analysis methods and the results that were needed to answer these three basic questions. Final conclusions are then presented.