Tire/road noise mitigation: A challenge for both acoustical and civil engineers

Even though E-cars with silent motors will drive on roads in the future, they will still roll on pneumatic tires and on rough road pavements, thus not making full use of the achievable noise reduction. Endeavors have been intensified to improve the knowledge on how tire/road noise is generated and how tires and road surfaces should be constructed to end up in a noise reducing tire/road system. Effective concepts for acoustically improved tires as well as advanced road pavements derive from these efforts. However, there seems to be a gap between Technology Readiness Level (TRL) group 1 to 6 (research lab and simulated world) and TRL group 7 to 9 (real world) which is hard to overcome in road construction. It will be shown how big the noise reduction potential is, which concepts have been simulated and practically tested and what is needed to bring low noise road surface concepts to a higher TRL.Based on recent research it will be shown how challenging it is not to lose the vibroacoustic manner of describing the tire/road noise problem and of testing noise reducing solutions on the way to the real road construction world.Keywords: Tire/Road Noise, Road Surface, Tires and Road-Tire Interactions.