State-of-the-art road surfacing to substantially cut traffic noise
Traffic noise abatement can be drastically improved by incorporating elasticity into a road’s top layer to suppress tyre vibrations. The EU-funded PERSUADE (Poroelastic road surface: An innovation to avoid damages to the environment) project developed such a noise-abating material using recycled tyre shreds. Project partners designed, produced and demonstrated poroelastic road surfacing (PERS) materials that provide excellent noise reduction. For this, they built full-scale test tracks with different stone/rubber/binder mixes, of varying length and on roads carrying different traffic loads in Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden. The team also monitored the tracks for a variety of parameters, including skid resistance, winter behaviour, noise reduction and durability. The PERSUADE team achieved initial tyre/road noise reductions around 10 dB with the best PERS materials, exceeding that of average noise barriers. Large amounts of recycled rubber from scrap tyres were used. All the materials tested on roads exposed to traffic met road administration requirements concerning skid resistance. Performance during winter conditions was also acceptable overall. Procedures to handle early snowfall and ice formation events were developed, including preventive and extra salting. PERS provided safer conditions in burn situations than standard dense asphalt or concrete pavements. Studies show that the materials used in PERS do not create chemical hazards during construction or operation. An environmental impact study and cost-benefit analysis reveal an environmentally sustainable, durable, safe and cost-efficient solution that offers exceptional traffic noise reduction under certain traffic and road conditions. It is mainly intended as an alternative to noise barriers or where no other noise-reducing options are feasible. Thanks to PERSUADE, the use of PERS has the potential to contribute to EU environmental policies for greenhouse gas emissions, noise abatement and reuse of worn tyres.
Keywords
Traffic noise, road surface, tyres, noise abatement, PERSUADE, poroelastic road surface