Aircraft noise assessment in the vicinity of airports with different descriptors

Abstract

New developments for aircraft noise zoning around the airports currently are under design in new states, including new EU member states. In these countries previous experience still exist and valid, particularly for sanitary-hygienic norms of the aircraft noise. But at the same moment the ICAO recommendations are used for these purposes also, so as the specific requirements/recommendations of the EU, for example, such as EU Directives 2002/49/EC, 2002/30/EC and 2006/93/EC. By this reason the estimation of aircraft noise impact on citizen near airports sometimes become ambiguous. Specific attention must be done to the airports with small aircraft traffic; the number of such airports is quite big in Lithuania, Ukraine and Russian Federation. The paper shows that for small city airport the noise zone, which is calculated for permissible limit described in La>nigth, may be bigger man the calculated in Lden. In general if to use the equivalent sound levels for noise zone limits it may produce a problem outside of these zones, because high maximum sound levels La,max along the flight routes may exceed the national sanitary-hygienic norms for noise inside residential areas, which is described by these levels too. In this case the sound exposure and maximum levels for separate flights was analyzed, preferably by measurements (more preferably using monitoring), because the accuracy of aircraft noise calculation results in this case is much less than for equivalent sound levels. Details of calculation and measurement steps in noise zoning procedures for airports with small traffic are discussed.