Overall Strategy

The general goal is to remove doubts about the technical and economical feasibility of the PERS solution for abating road traffic noise by demonstrating successful full-scale applications. The strategy involves five steps.

Step 1 In order to maximize the chances of technical success, the following preliminary works will be carried out:

• Laboratory tests with a view to optimizing the material mix with respect to mechanical properties (complex elastic modulus, flexural fatigue, hysteresis), acoustic properties (sound absorption), adhesion (to different sub-base materials), workability, porosity / drainage, resistance to tear and wear, resistance to rutting and resistance to fuel spillage,
• Small-scale field tests of resistance to emergency braking by heavy vehicles and behaviour in case of fire.

Step 2 Once an optimum mix design has been chosen, the material will be produced by specialized partner factories in different types of conditioning with a view to different laying / construction methods, namely: delivery of batches of bulk material, application of PERS on paving blocks for urban streets, pre-fabrication of sheets or mats and laying in long stretches followed by uprolling on a drum for subsequent transport and unrolling on site.

Step 3 The conditioned material will be delivered to the five countries that will build test sections on real roads in order to study the behaviour of different variants of PERS under different traffic and climate conditions. The tested solutions will partly differ from country to country. The full scale sections will be built in two phases; the second phase following twelve months after the first one. The aim of the staggering is to be able to learn from the experiences with the first phase for the second phase.

Step 4 The test sections will then be followed up by means of initial and periodic measurements and monitoring regarding noise performance (SPB and/or CPX measurements), acoustic absorption, skid resistance, rolling resistance (to be converted into fuel consumption and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions), drainage (to test possible clogging) and behaviour in winter (salting, snow removal). By the staggering of the construction of the test sections, steps 3 and 4 will be executed partly simultaneously.

Step 5 Finally, a global evaluation of the PERS technology will be performed and disseminated based on the technical results from the full-scale experiments and cost/benefit and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using the information gathered from the activities throughout the project, including consideration of waste management balance and global GHG emissions balance.

The work will be done within 8 work packages, of which 7 technical ones:

• Work Package 1 “Project management”
• Work Package 2 “Mixture optimization”
• Work Package 3 “Structural design”
• Work Package 4 “Construction”
• Work Package 5 “Monitoring”
• Work Package 6 “Environmental impacts”
• Work Package 7 “Cost/Benefit Analysis”
• Work Package 8 “Information management”