Noise barrier literature review:

It is difficult to attenuate low frequency noise because it can easily diffract (large
wavelength).
At sound hard boundary, the normal derivative of pressure is zero, i.e., the velocity
Diffraction based models
Acoustic Impedance:

Sound energy density (E), which is related to the sum of the sound pressure and
particle velocity, quantifies how much energy is stored in an acoustic wave, sound
intensity quantifies how much sound energy is transported and specific acoustic
impedance quantifies the possibility for sound energy to be transported.
Suppose that in a certain set up sound is travelling towards a full reflecting (rigid)
surface and the acoustic impedance is determined close to that surface. The
acoustic impedance will be high because close to the surface the particle velocity is
almost zero and the sound pressure is enlarged due to the reflection. All the sound

is reflected, an therefore close to the surface the intensity is zero: the same amount
of sound that goes in one direction goes also in the opposite direction so there is no
net flow of acoustic energy. The sound energy will not be affected much by the
surface because compared to a free propagating sound wave, the sound pressure
increases and the particle velocity decreases.
Note that the impedance is not dependent of the loudness of the sound field; it is
determined by the environment. Both sound intensity and sound energy is
dependent of the loudness of the sound field.
Reverberation chamber:
Usually a (diffuse) sound field is generated with a uniform energy density. This is
achieved with loudspeakers that are placed in the corners of such chambers and a
number of diffusers to prevent the presence of standing waves in the chamber. A
relatively large sample of the sound absorbing material (several m2 ) is placed in
the chamber and for a given frequency band the reverberation time T60 is
measured. T60 is the elapsed time at which the sound pressure level has dropped
60dB after the shutdown of the loudspeakers. The same procedure is performed
without the sample and the difference is a measure for the absorption coefficient.
For highly sound absorbing materials, the absorption coefficient can exceed a value
of one because of extra energy loss due to edge effects and diffraction. This can
also be the case if the sound field is non-diffuse. Various standards state that at
least 20 modes of vibration in the chamber are required in the lowest frequency
band.
It has been shown that if the total energy (that is the pressure plus the velocity
vector) is measured, the accuracy of the measurements increases