According to National Geographic, noise pollution is considered to be any unwanted or disturbing sound that affects the health and well-being of humans and other organisms. Sound is measured in decibels. There are many sounds in the environment, from rustling leaves (20 to 30 decibels) to a thunderclap (120 decibels) to the wail of a siren (120 to 140 decibels). Sounds that reach 85 decibels or higher can harm a person’s ears. Sound sources that exceed this threshold include familiar things, such as power lawn mowers (90 decibels), subway trains (90 to 115 decibels), and loud rock concerts (110 to 120 decibels). This is why sound mitigation has become such an important consideration in our personal and public lives.
One of the most effective weapons against outdoor noise pollution is the engineered sound barrier wall. These sound walls have been around for many years, and they help to mitigate sound coming from highways, HVAC units, railways, and many more applications. There are two primary design considerations with sound walls: They are either sound-reflective, or sound-absorptive. The simple way to differentiate the two is that reflective panels have sound bounce off of them and the noise is sent back in the direction it came, while absorptive walls actually absorb the sound instead of redirecting it.
Reflective sound barrier walls like concrete have been used for a long time to try to mitigate noise coming from things such as HVAC units and highways. The issue with this design is they are only bouncing the sound around, not stopping it. Absorptive sound barrier walls, on the other hand, tend to be more efficient because they actually stop the sound waves from going anywhere. Certain factors such as the thickness, density, and empty space all play a part in a material’s ability to absorb sound (S Amares, 2017).
The SonaGuard® outdoor fiberglass wall panels absorb noise and utilize the highest quality and most durable material in the market. Sound Fighter Systems, LLC has designed sound-absorptive walls for countless industrial and commercial applications over the past five decades, and some case studies for different applications can be found on our website: https://www.soundfighter.com/projects/product-case-studies/
Check out our explanation of absorptive vs. reflective here:
References:
S Amares et al 2017 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 908 012005. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/908/1/012005/pdf
https://www.environmentalpollutioncenters.org/noise-pollution/
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