A Study on the Performance of ARC Pavement for Traffic Noise Reduction - A SPB Comparison with Conventional Pavement

Abstract

This research investigates traffic noise reduction on highways paved with ARC material and establishes a quantitative model for evaluating the effect of traffic flow on traffic noise. A series of traffic noise measurements have been combined with traffic flow monitoring to compare the sound performance of ARC with conventional pavements and analyze the relationship between the noise levels over ARC pavement with traffic flow conditions. The 24-hour averaged Statistical Pass-By (SPB) noise levels indicate that the ARC pavement demonstrates better sound performance than that of conventional pavement in traffic noise reduction. The energetic averaging method is employed to study the relationship between traffic noise levels and traffic flow conditions. The applicability of ARC pavement to traffic noise reduction under various traffic fl ow conditions is also investigated. A relationship between traffic flow and traffic noise is established in terms of SPB noise levels and the traffic volumes for different vehicle categories. The relationship is employed to compare the noise reduction performance between ARC and conventional pavements under various traffic flow conditions. The research results indicate that ARC pavement is very effective at reducing the noise generated by large vehicles.

Keywords: ARC pavement, traffic noise reduction, traffic flow