Effects of Pavement Texture Characteristics on Tire–Pavement Noise from Dense-Graded Asphalt Concrete Pavement

Traffic noise causes discomfort to road users and residents near highways. Tire–pavement noise comprises major part of traffic noise caused by high-speed vehicles. Tire–pavement noise comes from tire vibration and air pumping in between a vehicle’s tires and the pavement’s surface texture. The intensity of the noise is affected by pavement texture characteristics such as texture depth and wavelength. To investigate the effects and mechanisms of tire–pavement noise, which depend on pavement textures, regression analysis between the noise and pavement texture in an asphalt-paved section was conducted. The result showed that the tire–pavement noise generation related to pavement textures can be explained by three principal mechanisms: (1) air pumping noise increases as wavelength increases due to larger intrusion of the tire into the surface texture, (2) tire vibration noise increases as texture depth increases due to larger volume of aggregate pushed into the tire, and (3) air pumping noise decreases as texture depth increases due to lower air pressure between the tire and the surface texture. Texture depth is highly correlated to texture wavelength because both parameters are dominated by the size of coarse aggregate. However, they influence tire–pavement noise in different ways. Thus, it can be concluded that overall tire–pavement noise cannot be interpreted and analyzed only through either texture depth or wavelength. The combined effects of texture depth and wavelength make it possible to better explain the mechanism and establish a comprehensive evaluation of tire–pavement noise.