Noise Emission Comparison Between Porous Concrete and Porous Asphalt Road Pavements

In this investigation the Authors developed a particular grading curve for the manufacture of a porous concrete road pavement and assessed the noise emission due to vehicles tyres rolling belonging to its use. In fact, this innovative superstructure, apart from guaranteeing excellent superficial characteristics from the standpoint of grip and rainfall discharge, allows an increase in the users safety, especially in case of severe meteorological conditions, because of the reduction of the phenomena of aquaplaning, splash, spray and lights reflection. In addition, the high material porosity involves a reduction in the noise emissions belonging to vehicles tyres rolling. Therefore, so as to assess the real drop of noise emissions connected to the use of such superstructures in an urban environment, some real scale pavements were manufactured, both with ordinary and porous concrete, the results being outstanding for the latter. Furthermore, in order to get an additional validation of the results obtained, a traditional and a twinlayer draining and noise reducing asphalt pavement were laid, both of them being considered as the state of the art on this matter; a typical bituminous pavement was also investigated from the same standpoint during the research. This comparison showed the high performances of the porous concrete superstructure, the results of all the draining pavements having the same order of magnitude. Thus, the Authors reckon that the investigation on porous concrete road pavements should be improved further by researchers, and it would be worth to issue some Standards which would control the innovative material characteristics as well as its manufacture exactly in the same way it usually happens for asphalt superstructures.