The Effect of Age Increasing and Traffic of Road Pavements on Acoustic Changes in Highways

The best way to reduce highway noise is predicting measures in order to reduce the noise at sound source place. This research is about the changes of traffic noise emission given by asphalt pavement over the time cause of traffics made by any vehicle types, according to accomplished observation the asphalt pavements noise level normally increases by its longevity. For porous pavements, it is a known phenomenon that the voids of the pavements tend to clog (compress) which leads to increase noise-generated from air compaction. But for other types of dense pavements or patulous graded one (not real porous) because of continuous changes in surface structure noticing atmospheric and traffic conditions in pavements life cycle the noise increases. Physical changes like raveling, cracking, etc are noted. That causes this increase in noise in the period in between when the bitumen film is warn off and when the pavements begins to deteriorate with distresses like raveling, cracking etc. The increase of noise has normally been analyzed in relation to the age of pavements. In this research this is supplemented by also using the traffic load as well as an artificial indicator defined as the change of noise predicted as a combination of actual physical age and traffic load.