Effect of Regional Climatic Factors on Reducing Noise Level from Power Equipment

Аннотация

The effect of regional climatic factors exerted on noise reduction from power equipment is considered based on data processing results for 210 cities over the territory of Russia. The value of the required noise reduction determines the capital and operating costs of silencers, shields, and other facilities designed to reduce the noise produced by power equipment. At the same time, the regional climatic factors exert a different effect on the required noise reduction from power equipment: they can be neglected at low frequencies on the one hand, while this influence can be crucial at high frequencies on the other hand. It is shown that the influence of climatic factors in different regions significantly differs at the same octave band frequency, and this difference can amount to several dozen decibels. With increasing octave band frequency, this difference increases. For example, at a octave band frequency amounting to 8 kHz, the greatest change ranges from 60–100 dB/km for the European part of Russia to 160 dB/km for northeastern Siberia. It is shown that an incorrect determination of the sound attenuation coefficient α in the atmosphere can lead, on the one hand, to an excess expenditure of energy resources at higher real α values, and, on the other hand, to the absence of any expected effect after the implementation of environmental measures at lower real α values. Thus, in developing measures for the attenuation of power equipment noise, it is necessary to take into account the effect of regional climatic factors, especially at high frequencies.