Abstract—In the framework of urban environmental control, acoustical noise is considered one of the most important physical polluting agents. In particular, urban area are strongly affected by noise coming from vehicular traffic. Nowadays traffic noise models are mainly used to predict traffic noise in urban general environments and don’t takes into account conflicting points, such as intersections. Only some models consider the addition of a constant penalty due to the presence of a road intersection. In this paper the authors summarize the classification and the choice criteria of different intersections typologies, and then investigate the noise impact of different road intersections both on a review plan and on a software aided performance. The introduction of graphical elements for designers and engineers, able to furnish hints for the choice of intersection typology and geometrical features, based on the acoustical impact on urban environment, is pursued. Noise maps, easy to be read by final user, are produced for different intersection typology and compared by means of contour lines or areas. Keywords—Noise Control, Acoustical Traffic Noise, Road Intersections, Predictive Software. I. INTRODUCTION OWADAYS the control of vehicles traffic flow in an urban environment is of a fundamental importance in the framework of the development of infrastructures in new residential and/or industrial zone of a growing city. If one wants to control the environmental impact of the new constructions, many physical polluting agents should be taken into account, such as noise and air pollution. A wide specific literature presents many suitable procedure to monitor these parameters. In particular, for the noise problem, we refer to Harmonoise and IMAGINE projects (Improved Methods for the Assessment of the Generic Impact of Noise in the Environment) [1, 2], funded by the European Community, which present an exhaustive description of the noise calculation, measurement and mapping problems. Moreover, in the Harmonoise project, there is the final and ambitious aim of producing an European common standard criterion for the characterization of noise sources and for the evaluation of their impact on the human being life. Manuscript received January 15, 2010. * is with the Department of Physics “E.R. Caianiello”, Faculty of Engineering, University of Salerno, Via Ponte don Melillo, I-84084, Fisciano (SA) – ITALY (corresponding author: Guarnaccia C., +39 089 969356; e- mail: guarnaccia@sa.infn.it , quartieri@unisa.it ). + is now with the Technical University of Sofia, English Language Faculty of Engineering Industrial Engineering, 1000, Sofia - (BULGARIA). ° is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Salerno, Via Ponte don Melillo, I-84084, Fisciano (SA) – ITALY. Very often, the noise problem is not well considered in the design of a new infrastructure, since only in the late years, most of the European countries are issuing a formal reference regulation on the noise control matter. Moreover the noise problem is not felt very important for human health with respect, for example, to air pollution or electromagnetic fields. This is probably due to a low perception of the risk and of the possible damages of noise, especially before the problem occurs, i.e. before the noise source is operating. More on this topic can be found in [3], where some of us proposed the definition of an overall Health Quality Index (HQI), based on the evaluation and on the monitoring of some physical polluting agents, such as noise, electromagnetic fields, fine dust and other air components, temperature and humidity. In general, scientific literature and law regulation consider road traffic as one of the main noise source in an urban area, together with railways, industrial areas and airports. It is quite evident that noise coming from vehicular traffic is strongly influenced by some “intrinsic” parameters (coming from the noise production and propagation processes), such as traffic volume, traffic flow, velocity, road features, etc., and other “specific” parameters (dependent on the particular area of interest), such as kind of vehicles, speed limits, vehicles maintenance duties, law emission thresholds, driving skills, amount and typologies of road intersections, etc.. All these parameters can be implemented in a so-called Traffic Noise predictive Model (TNM), which, in general, has the aim of predicting the noise equivalent level once the traffic flow is given. A review of the most used TNMs can be found, for example, in [4], where the authors performed a careful comparison and exploited the features that make the models to produce results eventually different from each others. The general expression of a TNM can be formulated in a three parameters formula as follow: C d Log b n P LogQ A L eq + ⋅ +       - + ⋅ = ) ( ) 1 ( 100 1 (1) where L eq is the acoustic equivalent level (defined later), Q is traffic volume in vehicles per hour, P is the percentage of heavy vehicles, n is the acoustical equivalent and d is the distance from observation point to center of the traffic lane. The A, b and C coefficients may be derived, for a fixed investigated area, by linear regression methods on many L eq data taken at different traffic flows (Q,P) and distances (d). The acoustical equivalent, n, (defined as the number of light vehicle that generate the same acoustic energy of an heavy Traffic Noise Impact in Road Intersections J. Quartieri*, N. E. Mastorakis + , C. Guarnaccia*, A. Troisi°, S. D’Ambrosio°, G. Iannone* N Issue 1, Volume 4, 2010 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ENERGY and ENVIRONMENT