Three Approaches to Study the Reduction of Pavement Noise Performances over Time
Invited paper
IFSTTAR
Wednesday 3 june, 2015, 10:00 - 10:20
0.2 Berlin (90)
Abstract:
Low noise pavements are part of the techniques available for road traffic noise
reduction. However, the unpredictable reduction of their acoustic performances
over time is an obstacle to a wider development. Studying the ageing effect of
pavement on noise reduction is difficult because of many parameters involved in
the ageing process, linked to the mix design, to the traffic and the weather
conditions. Furthermore, variations of noise levels over time can be small
compared to the measurement accuracy. The paper presents a set of studies
performed in France to better understand the reduction in noise performances of
road surfaces, according to three different approaches. One is purely
statistical and consists in analysing on the large national database of pavement
noise performances, the average trend of noise level increase with age, for
different types of pavements. The second one consists in measuring at a specific
time, the noise performances on different sections of different ages of a same
type of pavement. Both approaches lead to an observation and quantification of
noise level increase, however, they generally do not help in understanding the
phenomena involved, because detailed information is often missing in large
databases or for existing pavements. In the third approach, a specific
monitoring program is performed regularly on a set of identified sections,
starting when the section is newly laid and finishing some years later when the
section is removed. Noise levels and texture spectra are measured every year.
The advantages and drawbacks of the three methodologies will be discussed in the
paper. First results will be presented. They mainly concern porous asphalt
pavements and semi-porous thin layers with 0/10 or 0/6 chipping size. References
with dense asphalt pavements are also evaluated. Consistency between the results
of the three approaches will be discussed.