Environmental acoustics Essay

The research from various part of the world has been able to reveal that approximately 80 million people are exposed to unacceptable high noise levels particularly, the noise emitted from road/tyre. Thus, noise sources that affect people is mostly from road traffic noise, which is by far the most pervasive. In UK for example, over 90% of the population hear traffic noise directly from home while 10% consider noise highly annoying. Thus to reduce the annoying traffic noise, it is mandatory to consider the method of reducing the sources of noise by improving the tyres and road surfaces. While various measures have been adopted in reducing the propagation of noise in the sensitive areas, all of these measures have been note to play a vital part in achieving an acceptable acoustical environment for people living near to roads. Although, in the attempt to control noise on the road surface, there is need to study the noise generated by the tyre/road interaction. Most researches conducted have been revealed that Tyre/road surface interaction noise tends to dominate at moderate and high road speeds. Thus, to control the vehicles noise, there have been various encouragements to encourage innovation and to reflect the improvements made in vehicle design. However, the progress has been quite slower concerning the tyre noise, thus it was only in recent time that there that control for tyre noise has been introduced in the EU Directive of 2001/43/EC. The directive has established a test method for the type approval of tyres with respect to noise emissions and limit values for different types of tyre. Thus, to measure the road/tyre noise emission, this paper will focus on the noise emitted from different types on different road surface. The first part of the paper will focus on the introduction. Moreover, the methodology used in carrying out the test of tyre/road noise emission will be extensively analysed in this paper. Furthermore, the result of the test will also be made available in the research paper. Finally, conclusion and recommendation for the effective methods of reducing the noise pollution from the tyre/road surface will be focused. ( Environmental Research 2004)