Study on sound propagation in long enclosures with a vertical or inclined branch of different dimensions

As there may be some branches in long enclosures, such as high-speed railway and freeway tunnels, it will make a difference in the sound propagation in long enclosures if we give more consideration to different designs of the branches at the onset of their construction. However, most researches on the sound propagation in long enclosures available are concerned with straight long enclosures. In this paper, the sound pressure level (SPL) attenuation, early decay time (EDT), and reverberation time (RT30) of long enclosures with a vertical or inclined branch of different dimensions have been studied by comparing experimental results from physical scale models of such enclosures with those of the straight long enclosure. This experimental investigation gives interesting results on the behavior of sound propagation in long enclosures with a vertical or inclined branch of different dimensions. When conducting engineering design for long tunnels of the high-speed railway or freeway, it would be appropriate to consider designing the branch of the tunnels into a widened left inclined or right inclined one to provide a better relative SPL than that of other branches with different dimensions. This study further reveals that with an inclined branch of different dimensions, the EDT of the long enclosure will be different. At both 500 and 1000 Hz 1/3 octave bands, the EDT is the shortest when the long enclosure has a left inclined branch and an extended left inclined branch, while the EDT is the longest when the long enclosure has a widened vertical branch. Generally speaking, in the near field (i.e. the source-receiver distance is shorter than the threshold distance), the EDT measurements are similar, while in the far field (i.e. the source-receiver distance exceeds the threshold distance), the EDT is the longest for the straight long enclosure, second longest for the long enclosure with a widened inclined branch, third longest for the long enclosure with a vertical branch, and the shortest for the long enclosure with an extended inclined branch, which is similar to the trend with RT30.