Review of Japanese PERS pavements by Yokohama and Nipponroad in Japan: Our challenge and withdrawal

A Porous Elastic Road Surface (PERS) is a pavement using rubber chip, fine aggregate and polyurethane. Its acoustical absorption characteristics and flexibility make it a superior low noise pavement compared to porous asphalt pavement. In Japan, Yokohama Rubber and Nipponroad were engaged to develop an on-site construction type of PERS. During this development many difficult problems needed to be solved, especially de-bonding problems between PERS and the base layer. Finally, we could develop PERS which showed 10 dB noise reduction and more than 3 years life span. There was also the European PERS project named PERSUADE, but the life span of the pavements tried there were only 1-2 years. In this paper, field test result are presented and the difference between Japanese PERS and PERSUADE PERS are discussed. At present, Japanese PERS R&D activites have come to end. We hope our experiences will be help for the future development of low noise pavement. Please take note that construction of PERS in Japan was made by other organizations too, which is not treated here.