An Experimental Investigation of Environmental Noise for High-rise Apartment in Urban Areas

As a part of acoustical design, it is often necessary to quantify the aspects of an existing environment noise in order to predict an appropriate acoustical treatment. Previous studies showed that the most common sources of exterior noise, also known as environmental noise (or community noise), were traffic noise, aircraft noise, industrial noise, etc. Transportation (air, road, and rail) noise was the dominant and most common source of noise exposed in residential neighborhoods. These days the road traffic noise becomes more aggravated due to the rapid increase of vehicles, and has great effects on the dwelling environment. Therefore this study investigated the characteristics and sources of the road traffic noise at each given time depending on the amount of the road traffic transportation. Noise levels of urban areas in Seoul were measured at first, fifth, tenth, and nineteenth floors for two days of weekday and two days of weekend. The results showed that the noise levels in the daytime were 10dB higher than those in the nighttime during the weekday. However, those differences of the noise levels between the daytime and the nighttime were decreased to 7dB during the weekend. Also, the highest noise levels were at the 5th floor and decreased as the measured places went up to top of the building.