A psychoacoustic based approach to pavement classification
Invited paper
CTAC, University of Minho
Wednesday 3 june, 2015, 09:00 - 09:20
0.2 Berlin (90)
Abstract:
The road traffic is one of the major contributors to environmental
noise, which can cause considerable impacts on public health and quality of
life of populations. However, road noise raises several questions because, if
on one hand is associated with several health problems and welfare, on the
other hand its lack constitutes a risk to the safety of road users. Thus, it
becomes essential to classify road pavements not only based on acoustic
indicators but also based on psychoacoustic indicators. Therefore, this work
aims to contribute to pavement classification from the point of view of
psychoacoustics. An innovative approach leading to important methodological
advantages was done by using the Close proximity Method (CPX) method to
acquire tyre-road noise.This work presents the acoustic characterization of
five different types of pavement by using three acoustic and psychoacoustic
indicators (LAmax, LAeq and Loudness) as a function of speed. Each variable
was related to the sound intensity and annoyance evaluation responses of
twenty two individuals subjected to the acquired noise. As main results,
loudness proved to be more sensitive to vehicle speed and type of pavement
than LAmax and LAeq and fits better with individual’s responses.