Communications of the ACM
Computational Power Against Noise
Equipment will measure the noise emission of trains on the Swiss rail network.
Credit: EMPA
The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment is working with Empa's Acoustics and Noise Control Laboratory to develop a computer model to simulate noise levels along the Swiss rail network. The sonRAIL model will provide noise maps and calculate the sound exposure of individual buildings. Federal and local authorities can use sonRAIL to calculate sound levels from existing and planned rail lines and to measure the effectiveness of the countermeasures.
The intensity of train noise is based on factors such as the kind of train, its speed, the presence of cliffs or buildings that can reflect the noise, the construction of the track bed, the local topography, and the weather. Empa researchers, led by Kurt Eggenschwiler, note that a powerful computational system is required to measure all of the different factors.
Empa uses the Ipazia computer cluster, which provides high computational performance and allows for parallel calculations on several processors.
From Empa
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