Temperature Effects on the Correlations between Tire-Pavement Noises and Pavement Surface Characteristics

The correlations between tire-pavement noises and pavement surface characteristics have been investigated for many decades, but temperature effects on these correlations are not clear yet. The objective of this paper was to investigate temperature effects on correlations between noise levels and surface characteristics correlations. Tire-pavement noises were measured quarterly by on-board sound intensity (OBSI) method on four types of asphalt pavements on the 2009 National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) test track. Air and pavement temperatures were also recorded during those noise measurements. Four pavement surface characteristics (texture, porosity, roughness, and stiffness) were correlated with noise levels using a linear regression method. Temperature effects were established by comparing correlation coefficients between noise levels and surface characteristics with/without temperature correction. The results showed that, air temperature influenced the correlations between noise levels and surface textures, and temperature corrections were necessary to be taken before analysis. It would be benefit to data processing during tire-pavement noise research.