Effect of Pavement Texture on Tire/Pavement Interaction Noise

Pavement texture has a pronounced effect on what is commonly referred to as simply “tire noise”. The disturbance in question should properly be called tire/pavement interaction noise. A noise ranking can be made among tires only when they are all measured on the identical pavement texture. The importance of pavement texture is most clearly apparent with smooth and rib tires. Highly textured surfaces cause the noise level of conventional rib truck tires to reach that of lug tires. Passenger tire noise rankings are reversed by pavement texture differences. The gradient of pavement texture, both lateral and longitudinal, is a definite problem affecting the reliability of passby noise measurements.