Integration of the efficiency of noise barrier caps in a 3D ray tracing method. Case of a T-shaped diffracting device

Road barrier diffracting caps have shown a renewed interest for several years since they give the opportunity of increasing the barrier efficiency without changing its overall height. First investigations on the efficiency of road barrier caps calculated with a boundary element method (BEM) have shown that the efficiency obtained with coherent line sources is underestimated compared to that with incoherent line sources, more representative of road traffic noise. The present work deals with the characterisation of the real performance of a T-shaped absorbing cap with road traffic noise conditions. Two different approaches are compared: on one hand calculations with the help of a BEM program able to achieve 2D and 2D12 simulations are made; on the other hand outdoor measurements on a test-wall using a maximum length sequence technique are carried out. The goal in the two approaches is to isolate the top edge diffracted sound field in order to determine an extrinsic value of octave band efficiency of the cap for many source–receiver pairs. These results integrated in a ray tracing prediction method enable the integration of air absorption along each ray path and give the real efficiency of such a device in the case of complex and realistic configurations for barriers of finite length.