Utilization of porous asphalt material in road construction for reducing the vehicular noise

Abstract

All over the world the growth in traffic volume particularly in urban area has become serious concern. As a result, the traffic congestion is increasing and subsequently noise pollution is also increasing. It has been observed that major part of urban roads are constructed with asphalt pavement and the surface of this type of pavement is impervious in nature. Sound produced from traffic cannot be absorbed by the conventional impervious surface. The present study focuses on such solution so that the noise pollution produced by traffic can be reduced. Pavement made by porous asphalt material is a type of pavement which possesses permeable surface. Various roads of Agartala city of Tripura have been selected for conducting study on noise pollution produced by traffic and it is observed that in Old Motor Stand road, value of noise on conventional asphalt pavement (CAP) is 101.05 dB(A) and 92.10 dB(A) in day and night time respectively. The level of noise in other roads is also considerably higher than the standard limit. In this study, stone aggregates have been coated with plastic material (LDPE) at different percentages of 0.25%, 0.5%, 0.75% and 1% for the preparation of porous asphalt samples. After conducting Marshall Stability test, it is found that at 0.5% plastic content, porous asphalt mix gives higher stability, which satisfies the MoRTH guideline. Simultaneously it is also observed that the value of noise level is reduced by 4–5% after using Porous Asphalt Material (PAM) at 0.5% plastic content in the stone aggregate. So Porous Asphalt Pavement (PAP) may reduce the noise level and it may be considered as the alternative solution to reduce the noise pollution in urban area.