Over the last 20 years, many highway jurisdictions have experimented with different asphalts that include blended recycled rubber particles as a way to re-use old tires as well as to monitor the effects of rubber in possibly reducing the aging effects in asphalt pavements. Anecdotal comments following these experiments were also being received noticing a reduction in traffic noise with these rubberized mixes when compared to conventional pavements. While there have been many claims of noise reduction from different agencies over the years, there was limited conclusive documentation and testing to support the claims. In late 2003, the University of Waterloo's Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technologies (CPATT) and the Regional Municipality of Waterloo embarked on a partnership to first design and construct noise reducing pavement test sections and then secondly to conduct controlled noise testing on four different types of asphalt mixes to accurately determine the noise-reducing characteristics of different asphalt surface course mixes. For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD number E211426.
Abstract