Californian and Danish Study on Acoustic Aging of Road Pavements.

Author(s)
Bendtsen, H. Kohler, E.R. Lu, Q. & Rymer, B.C.
Year
Abstract

It is the experience by noise technicians that the traffic noise emissionof a given asphalt pavement changes over time. Knowledge on acoustical aging is important for road administrations when developing policies and strategies for noise abatement. It is important to know how noise reducing aswell as “normal” pavements performs over time. Acoustical aging is important information in order to achieve good accuracy when noise is predicted with methods like the American traffic noise model (TNM) method or the Nordic NORD2000 method or the like. Noise performance models for road pavements are necessary if noise is to be integrated as an active parameter in Pavement Management Systems. The purpose of this current paper is to contribute to the ongoing international development in the field of acoustical aging by performing a comprehensive analysis of four existing Californian and Danish results from long time noise measurement series on asphalt pavements. For porous pavements (built in air void over around 15 %) it is a known phenomenon that the voids of the pavements tend to clog and that this increases the noise generated from air pumping. But for other dense and open graded (but not real porous) pavement types there is not much knowledge on which changes in the surface structure that causes this increase in noise in the period in between when the bitumen film is warn off and when thepavements begins to deteriorate with distresses like raveling, cracking etc. The objective is to analyze and compare trends in the development of noise over time. A comparison of the actual nominal noise levels is not themain objective of this study but rather the change in levels over time. The development of the noise spectra over the years is also analyzed in order to investigate which mechanisms of noise generation might be changed over time. The increase of noise has normally been analyzed in relation to the age of pavements. In this paper this is supplemented by also using the traffic load as well as an artificial indicator defined as the change of noise predicted as a combination of actual physical age and traffic load.

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Publication

Library number
C 48001 (In: C 47949 DVD) /15 / ITRD E854002
Source

In: Compendium of papers DVD 89th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board TRB, Washington, D.C., January 10-14, 2010, 12 p.

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This publication is one of our other publications, and part of our extensive collection of road safety literature, that also includes the SWOV publications.