Method of control of the noise level of road vehicles in use

The elaboration of the method of control of noise generated by moving road vehicles has been made possible by using previous measurements of external noise produced by each of those particular vehicles. The results have made it possible to lay down the requirements for the design of specialised instrumentation capable of making such measurements. The advantage of this development is that it makes it possible for inexperienced technical staff to obtain the required acoustic measurements. The previously employed methods of noise prediction have required preceisely defined measuring conditions at the measuring site. The measurements, besides being laborious and time-consuming, give little information concerning the technical condition of the vehicle. On the contrary, with the method presented in this paper it is possible to measure not only the sound pressure level of the general external noise of the vehicle but also the band levels in the two frequency bands which are characteristic of the working engine at a definite speed of rotation, thus giving a preliminary estimation of the vehicle's noisiness. Defining the limiting values for noise level and band levels will enable excessively noisy vehicles to be eliminated.The results of measurements obtained with the above technique for various groups of vehicles are presented in this paper.