Low noise road surfaces of existing types may in favourable cases and in new conditions provide up to 7 dB of noise reduction. For higher noise reductions, innovative solutions must be sought. Poroelastic road surfaces (PERS) may be such a solution, which currently is studied in the EU project PERSUADE. This paper presents results of trials with a PERS version prefabricated by one of the project partners. Tests were made in a laboratory...

When transport is analysed for its safe delivery the focus is mainly on assessing the safety of roads and the risk of undesired events. These include road accidents, an occurrence which is relatively rare and random. Randomness means that accidents depend on several factors which are partly deterministic (can be controlled) and partly stochastic (random and unpredictable). The set of crash contributing factors can be classified...

Traffic noise is one of the most important environmental problems in densely populated urban areas. At low speeds the tyre/road interaction dominates all other sources. It is anticipated that when electric and hybrid vehicles gain dominance in city traffic, the importance of tyre/road noise will still increase as electric engines are much less noisy than combustion engines. On the other hand, electric and hybrid urban vehicles...

Two low-cost methods of estimating the road surface condition are presented in the paper, the first one based on the use of accelerometers and the other on the analysis of images acquired from cameras installed in a vehicle. In the first method, miniature positioning and accelerometer sensors are used for evaluation of the road surface roughness. The device designed for installation in vehicles is composed of a GPS receiver and...

A so-called poroelastic road surface (PERS) is being developed in Europe. This contains a large percentage of rubber particles mixed with hard aggregate (stone and sand) and bound with polyurethane. This gives high air void content (around 30 %), high elasticity and smooth texture, all of which should give low noise properties. Inthis experiment anominally 30 mm thick sample of PERS was mounted on a steel drum. Various car tyres...