Highway and Airport Pavement Research Center
High-Speed Tire-Pavement Test Platform Lab
Today,the overall national network of major highways of China is basically in place. Besides maintaining the structural durability of pavements, other aspects such as road safety and environmental impacts are also receiving increased attention of the public and the road authorities. The key technical components directly related to road safety and environmental issues aretire-pavement skid resistance and tire-pavement noise.
Over the last 10 years, the Highway and Pavement Research Center of Chang’an University has developed a specialized laboratorywith research focus on pavement surface functional properties. The laboratory is equipped witha large number of patented equipment developed by Center researchersto studythe performance of tire-pavement noise and skid resistance. The laboratory has been officially named the "Tire-Pavement Interaction Laboratory", affectionately called the "Golden House" by research students.
The “Golden House” consists of two main components. The first one is a large scale semi-anechoic room to eliminate sound reflections, allowing noise-pavement experiments to be conducted and not affected by indoor reverberation. The second one is the “High-Speed Tire-Pavement Test Platform”which can be applied to study the interaction of tires and pavement surfaces, abbreviated as HTPTP, or HTP2.
The size of the semi-anechoic chamber is 11×10.5×6m, and the volume is 693m3. The semi-anechoic chamber iscovered by sound-absorbing tip placing on the top and surrounding walls. The existing sound absorption wedges can effectively absorb the direct sound from the sound source and reflected sound. The low end frequency range can reach 63Hz satisfying the requirement of tire-pavement noise measurement. It offers a realistic laboratory facility to conduct tire-pavement noise test to study various influencing parameters including pavement materials, tire tread pattern, and vehicle speed.
The Golden House is also suitable for conducting experiments to study sound source evaluation, sound power testing, and sound absorption efficiency for different pavement materials.
The high-speed tire-pavement test platform HTP2 consists of a power system, a boom, a vertical ring test surface, a horizontal ring test surface, and a test system.
The test tire is mounted at the tip ofa rotating arm which is driven by a power system. The loaded tire moves at high speed on the test surface to simulate the interaction between a vehicle tire and pavement surface. The test speed on the vertical ring wall surface can reach up to 80km/h. The study of interaction between test tire and pavement surface under the effect of different water film thickness and temperature can be conducted on the horizontal ring test surface.
On the vertical ring wall and the horizontal ring surface, the noise and skid resistance characteristics of vehicle tires running on different test surfaces can be tested. The control room equipped with self-developed control system is isolated from the test room.
The following research can be carried out using the "Tire-Pavement Interaction Laboratory":
（ 1 ） Research on pavement surface functional characteristics, including:
Mechanism of tire-pavement interaction;
Tire-pavement noise and skid resistance related issues;
Effectiveness of pavement maintenance in improving skid resistance and noise reduction;
New pavement materials for improving skid resistance and noise reduction;
Testing of pavementmaterials at temperature ranging from room temperature to 70 ℃ ;
Durability study of different pavement mixtures ；
（ 2 ） Research of vehicle tires characteristics interacting with pavement surface:
Tire vibration characteristics research and low noise tire research;
（ 3 ） Research on acoustic properties of pavement materials ：
Evaluation of soundabsorptioncoefficient ， impacts of sound source, and power spectrum analysis.
With continuous improvement of the capability of the testing platform and laboratory equipment, the “Tire-Pavement Interaction Laboratory” will provide a top rated testing platform in the research ofskid resistance, noise reduction, and durability of pavement surface materials. Also, through continuous effort and innovative ideas from researchers and students, more impactive research can be conducted.
A Special Thank To
Entrepreneur Mr. Liu Jianlin for making selfless donation to the development of the laboratory
