Sound Absorption Properties of Pervious Pavements Studied at MnROAD

Status:  Complete
Report Date:  04/04/2023

Summary:

Sound absorption is an important characteristic of pavement. In particular, sound absorption is a proxy for overall pavement condition in pervious pavements. In this research, sound absorption tests were done using an impedance tube, white noise source, two microphones, and an analyzer on MnROAD low-volume sections 32 and 39 (two non-contiguous cells of non-pervious concrete) and 5 contiguous arrangements of Cells 85, 86, 87, 88, and 89 at the Low-Volume Road of MnROAD (pervious concrete on granular subgrade, pervious asphalt on granular subgrade, non-pervious asphalt, pervious asphalt on cohesive subgrade, and pervious concrete on cohesive subgrade, respectively). These were constructed in 2008 and measurements taken in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2014 were analyzed. Data analysis using two-sample t-tests at the natural frequency of 1000 Hz and the construction of probability density functions for each test section showed that the non-pervious pavements had significantly lower sound absorption when compared to the pervious pavements. The concrete pavements had significantly lower sound absorptions in comparison to the asphalt counterparts all things being equal. The largest sound absorption occurred in the pervious asphalt on granular subgrade, and the smallest sound absorption occurred in the non-pervious concrete test section.

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