Climate Road - Noise-reducing porous asphalt for stormwater management

Project start May2014. Completed October 2017.

Summary

Traffic noise and heavy rainfall is an increasing problem in Denmark, especially in densely populated areas. The existing drainage system capacity is not sufficient to drain the surface; thus, it is necessary to upgrade the existing system or local drainage arrangements to avoid future flooding related problems.

The Climate Road project aims at using roads as a basin to delay rainwater from reaching the local drainage system. The project’s main goal is to develop a permeable wearing course with low tire/road noise emission and long service-life. Moreover, winter maintenance and skid resistance is addressed to guarantee the drivers´ safety.

The project investigates optimized maintenance and cleaning procedures to assure long service-life and ways of coupling or decoupling roads to existing drainage systems, assuring that the life-cycle cost of the new road type is lower than the one from existing drainage system with upgraded drainage capacity.

Project objectives

• Develop a modified bitumen polymer that increases the service-life of permeable wearing course.
• Optimize road surface characteristics to reduce tire/road noise emission.
• Assure a permeability that can drain approximately 55 mm of rainwater per hour.
• Develop a maintenance strategy that assures low life-cycle cost.

Participants

• Danish Technological Institute (Project Manager), DK
• NCC A/S, DK
• Danish Road Directorate, DK
• Rødovre Municipallity, DK
• Danish Asphalt Pavement Association, DK
• HOFOR, DK