Prediction and Analysis of Environmental Noise Effect for Evaluating the Suitability of Noise Level in Atlantic Salmon Growing Environment

In this study, environmental noise was analyzed and its effect was predicted to evaluate the suitability of noise level in Atlantic salmon growing environment. First, the environmental noise in atmosphere was measured at major positions within the aquaculture project candidate site located near Gimhae airport and light rail transit. Using the frequency analysis, it was found that the overall noise characteristics at the site is dominated by aircraft noise. Further, to derive the underwater noise in a realistic and efficient way using FEM numerical analysis, the measured noise was imported as input to the FEM model implemented at the scale of a water tank; the acoustic propagation characteristics originated from the aircraft noise source were considered as plane waves in the far-field through a simple theoretical approach. The predicted underwater noise results from the acoustic numerical analysis were compared with hearing threshold of Atlantic salmon to evaluate the suitability of noise level in water tank. The approach and process used in this study may prove to be an effective and practical method to quantitatively predict and analyze environmental noise at a relatively large scale using a combination of measurement and FEM numerical analysis.