PURPOSES : Exposed aggregate concrete pavements have been adopted in several countries because of their advantages of pavement texture characteristics, which can produce low tire-pavement noise and higher load-carrying capacities. The magnitude of tire-pavement noise greatly depends on the wavelength of pavement texture. The wavelength of exposed aggregate concrete pavement can be controlled with maximum sizing and by controlling the amount of coarse aggregates in the concrete mixture. In this study, the maximum size and the amount of coarse aggregate in the exposed aggregate concrete pavement are investigated to produce equal levels of wavelength in the asphalt pavement.
METHODS: A simple method to measure the average wavelength of pavement texture is introduced. Subsequently, the average wavelength of typical asphalt pavement is investigated. A set of mixture designs of exposed aggregate concrete with three maximum-sized coarse aggregates, and three amounts of coarse aggregate are used. The average wavelengths are measured to find the mixture design needed to produce equal levels of wavelength as typical asphalt pavement.
RESULTS : With a cement content of 420 kg/m3 and fine aggregate modulus of 30%, the number of exposed aggregates was 48, and the shortest texture depth provided a wavelength of 4.2 mm. According to the number of exposed aggregates, the exposed aggregate concrete pavement could be rendered low-noise, because its wavelength was similar to that of asphalt pavement ranging from 3.9 to 4.4 mm.
CONCLUSIONS : Selection of appropriate maximum sizes and the amount of coarse aggregates for exposed aggregate concrete pavement can produce a wavelength texture closely resembling that of asphalt pavement. Therefore, the noise level of exposed aggregate concrete pavement can be reduced with an appropriate maximum size and the amount of coarse aggregates are employed.