Sound barriers are widely used to reduce the wayside noise level of Shinkansen. Although a number of different types of sound barriers that have a special feature in shape have recently been developed, their effects have not been clarified quantitatively. Therefore, scaled model experiments are carried out. In the experiments a total of 34 types of sound barriers are tested to estimate the attenuation of the wayside noise level for each type. Further more, effective shapes of sound barriers are proposed on the basis of the experiments.

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