Technical Inovations

Technical Innovations

Braunstein + Berndt GmbH, the developers of SoundPLAN, are more than a software house transferring set calculation standards into software. Braunstein + Berndt GmbH are consulting engineers as well as software developers. As such, the requirements, needs and wishes of consulting engineers are brought to the software research and development teams. The solutions they develop are used by practitioners to ensure SoundPLAN results are tested in practice before new versions are delivered.

Many of the features now available in other noise control software have long been available in SoundPLAN. Wall Design, for example, has been available in SoundPLAN since 1992. Others followed by implementing similar software. Now having a wall designing module seems to have become standard. SoundPLAN's Wall Design module, however, with its unlimited number of wall elements, and receivers driving the selection/modification of wall shape, plus the innovative optimization histogram, is still way ahead of the rest.

SoundPLAN invests a lot of time in new and advanced solutions. When we see a problem, we look for solutions. The fall 2001 release of SoundPLAN included another new, innovative feature: City Noise Map.

The Problem that led to City Noise Map:
How can we generate noise contours in city centers with very narrow streets found in some of the old towns in Europe? To draw noise contours in city streets just a few meters wide, we would need to decrease the grid distance for a Grid Noise Map to 1 or 2 meters. Otherwise we could not draw the contours correctly. This would increase the calculation time and still cause problems very near the source lines.

The SoundPLAN Solution:
Instead of using an equidistant grid, SoundPLAN generates receiver points along the facade of the building, the roads and the screening elements. After these fixed points are generated, receivers are placed in vacant spaces to make sure a minimum density of receivers is maintained throughout the noise map. The receivers are calculated and the answers stored for post processing in the Graphics where the noise map is drawn from triangulations of the receiver points.

"Bubbles" in the noise map caused by slanting intersections between the fixed grid of receivers and the source line can be avoided by arranging the receivers in a mesh rather than s grid.

The resulting noise map has much better looking noise contours for similar calculation times.

Another area of extensive research and development is noise mapping. Creating colorful noise maps depicting noise levels is simply not enough! To make big projects worthwhile, four things must be possible:

1. Easy upgrade of noise maps to future traffic volumes and conditions.
With an interface to traffic planning software, SoundPLAN can get traffic volume and speed information. With the ability to update the traffic data on line, noise maps can be kept up to date.

2. Conflict maps must show how many dB an area exceeds the noise ordinance.
For this it is imperative that noise contours are calculated on the basis of the individual area. This is the only guarantee that noise contours are accurate from border to border of the area.

3. The calculation of the annoyance must pinpoint the number of residents exposed to specific noise levels. Modeling a town, dividing the number of residents by the number of grid cells, and then counting how many grid cells are in each noise class is not an accurate enough measure to pinpoint how many residents are exposed to which noise levels. SoundPLAN allows the user to divide the noise map into any number of use areas where the building character and height of the buildings is uniform. After calculating a facade noise map, each side of every building has information about noise levels. A spreadsheet coordinated to the noise map imports the number of residents and averages this on the facades. By matching average resident concentrations per meter of facade, SoundPLAN can easily and accurately count how many people per area are subjected to which noise level.

4. Support of the search for solutions.
SoundPLAN gives the user the tools to simulate different scenarios for noise control. The data management in SoundPLAN is designed for multiple versions of traffic routings, traffic volumes and placement of noise control structures. Wall Design allows noise control structures for traffic noise to be optimized, and Expert System allows solutions to be optimized and tested for industry noise.

Last modification:25 November 2003