Highway noise barriers, built to your road section

What a barrier is made of

A noise barrier is a post, a panel and a foundation — and the panel is the only part we make. Getting the panel right means getting three things right: mass, absorption and the seal at the joints.

Our panels are cassettes: a perforated aluminium or galvanized steel face, a mineral wool or glass wool core, a solid back sheet, and a frame that carries the load to the post. The perforation lets sound into the core, where it is absorbed instead of reflected back over the road. A reflective panel made of the same mass will be cheaper and 5–8 dB worse.

Figures are for a 100 mm cassette at 500 × 2000 mm module and are confirmed by the EN 1793 test report for the specific build-up.

Which barrier system fits the site?

Four systems cover almost every highway job: a vertical wall, a curved-top wall, a semi-enclosure and a full enclosure. Which one you get is decided by how high the receiver sits above the road, not by the panel — a wall shields a bungalow at road level, and does almost nothing for a sixth-floor window 40 m away.

Nothing on this page is a catalogue item. Each job starts from your cross-section, the acoustic target in dB(A) at the nearest receptor, and the wind and seismic load for the site; the panel, the post and the foundation are then sized to that. Batches are cut after the drawing set is signed, which is why the module, the colour and the glazing ratio can all be project-specific without changing the price logic.

Heights are the range we have fabricated, not a limit. The acoustic calculation that sets the height belongs with your acoustic consultant or the road authority; we size the panel and the steel to the height they specify.

How much noise does a barrier actually remove?

At the nearest house, most highway barriers deliver 5 to 10 dB(A) — and 10 dB is roughly what the ear hears as a halving of loudness. That is a much smaller number than the 28–32 dB in the panel table above, and the gap is not a contradiction: the table quotes the laboratory rating of the panel alone (Rw + Ctr to EN 1793-2), measured with no gaps, no diffraction over the top edge and no sound reflected back off the opposite wall. What a resident experiences is the insertion loss of the whole wall in place, and it is always the lower figure.

The targets practitioners actually design to are set out plainly by the US Federal Highway Administration, which administers the federal highway-noise regulation:

“The minimal substantial reduction allowed is 5 dB(A).” For a project to count as reasonable, “the highway agency chooses the design goal in a range of 7-10 dB(A)”.

Federal Highway Administration, Highway Traffic Noise — Frequently Asked Questions, US Department of Transportation, Washington DC — fhwa.dot.gov. Cited 31 October 2026.

Two practical consequences follow. Height buys less than the price suggests: once the wall breaks the line of sight the first few decibels arrive quickly, and each further metre adds less than the metre before it, so the height is fixed by the acoustic model and not by how much panel a budget will carry. And a wall stops working where it stops shielding, which is why a barrier for a sixth-floor window is generally not built as a wall at all. FHWA states the limit without softening it: “Generally, it is not feasible and/or reasonable to build a noise barrier tall enough to mitigate noise for floors above the ground floor level.” Above that line the answer is a canopy — semi-enclosure or full enclosure — and the design stops being posts in the ground and becomes a steel frame in its own right.

Modules, posts and foundations

The module is the unit everything else follows. 500 × 2000 mm is the workhorse; 500 × 4000 mm halves the number of joints and is worth the extra handling on long straight runs.

Module

500 × 2000 mm standard · 500 × 4000 mm · 1000 × 2000 mm on request

Panel thickness

80 mm and 100 mm

Posts

H-beam 100 × 100, 125 × 125, 150 × 150, 175 × 175 mm, to structural design

Post protection

Hot-dip galvanised to EN ISO 1461, 85 µm minimum, or galvanised plus powder coat

Base connection

Base plate with anchor bolts to a concrete strip footing or bored pile

Wind design

To EN 1991-1-4, with the terrain category and return period you specify

Accessories

Top cap, bottom flashing, corner and end panels, drainage gaps, bird mesh

Minimum

One bay — a trial bay or a single span is a normal first order, not an exception

HS codes

7610.90 aluminium structures · 7308.90 steel structures · 7616.99 aluminium parts

Standards the panels are built to

European tenders reference the EN 14388 family almost everywhere, and the Gulf increasingly does the same. If your specification is written to a different national code, send the clause.

Test reports for the acoustic and mechanical performance of the supplied panel system are issued with the quotation.

Sources

1. European Committee for Standardization (CEN). EN 14388: Road traffic noise reducing devices — Specifications — the product standard behind the panel, the factory production control and the CE marking on a European tender. cencenelec.eu
2. CEN. EN 1793-1 (sound absorption, DLα and classes A1–A4) and EN 1793-2 (airborne sound insulation, Rw and classes B1–B3) — the two numbers a tender actually scores. cencenelec.eu
3. CEN. EN 1794-1/-2 — non-acoustic performance: mechanical stability under wind load, safety and environmental requirements. cencenelec.eu
4. CEN. EN 1991-1-4: Eurocode 1 — Actions on structures, Part 1-4: Wind actions; EN 1090-3 for the execution of aluminium structures. eurocodes.jrc.ec.europa.eu
5. International Organization for Standardization. ISO 1461: Hot dip galvanized coatings on fabricated iron and steel articles — the 85 µm minimum on our posts. iso.org
6. US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. Highway Traffic Noise — Frequently Asked Questions — the 5 dB(A) minimum reduction and the 7–10 dB(A) design goal that federally funded barriers are measured against. fhwa.dot.gov

The standard numbers, the coating thickness and the class boundaries above are quoted from the bodies that publish them. What is ours is the drawing, the module and the date we can ship.

From section drawing to container

Barriers are project work, so the sequence matters more than the price list. This is the path a typical order takes, and where the time goes.

1. Section and target. Road cross-section, wall height, acoustic target in dB(A) at the receptor.
2. Panel selection. Absorptive, reflective, transparent or combined — with the resulting wall height.
3. Shop drawings. Module layout, post positions, base plate reactions, end and corner details.
4. Approval. You and your engineer sign the drawing set; nothing is cut before that.
5. Production. Cassettes, posts and accessories, with a pre-assembly check of one bay.
6. Loading plan. Panels nested, posts bundled by position, accessories crated by bay number.
7. Site support. Drawings, a remote walk-through, and one bay assembled in our yard on video before shipment.

Packing, loading and site logistics

Panels nest: five 100 mm cassettes occupy the space of one at full depth if you stack them face-to-face and alternate. That is what makes a 40′ HC the right container for a barrier and a 20′ the wrong one, even though the weight would fit either.

Packing

Panels nested and strapped, posts bundled by position, accessories crated by bay number

Loading

40′ HC takes roughly 300–400 m² of panel; posts on top or in a second container

Marking

Every bundle carries the bay number from the drawing set — installation needs no guessing

Documents

Invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, test reports, drawing set as issued

Inspection

One bay pre-assembled and photographed before shipment; you approve the photos