Partners’ role
Università di Pisa
In the asphalt pavement field, the main experience has been acquired by DICI staff with in the “LEOPOLDO Project”, a regional project of which DICI was the scientific manager, aimed at drawing up guidelines for the design, construction, control and maintenance of low noise and high safety pavements of the ordinary roads of Tuscany Region. It has allowed to develop an advanced know-how for the characterization, the monitoring and the performance tests of traditional and innovative techniques and materials used in the transport infrastructures.
For the purpose of the NEREiDE project, the role of DICI is to coordinate the technical and dissemination activities of all the partners and to make available its know-how to design, to test and to monitor new porous asphalt pavements and low noise surfaces, composed by recycled asphalt pavements (RAP) and crumb rubber from scrap tires and produced by using the method of warm mix.
In particular, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the experimental project, the designed mixtures will be laid to realize 12 new road pavements sections and DICI will evaluate their structural and surface characteristics by carrying out laboratory and in situ tests by using high-performance instrumentation.
The experimental activities will lead to the development of specific guidelines to be used by Road Administrations when they prepare specifications for the construction of new porous asphalt, low-noise and low carbon footprint road surfaces. Guidelines will be developed in order to upgrade and to improve the methods currently available to assess the effectiveness of low noise road surfaces in urban areas.
ARPAT - Agenzia regionale per la protezione ambientale della Toscana
In LIFE NEREiDE, ARPAT is responsible for monitoring, developing new measurement methods and procedures and contributes to the guidelines on monitoring pavements efficiency. Monitoring activities include ante and post operam noise monitoring with CPX method and other noise measurements to be established. New measurement method for the evaluation of Pass-by noise in urban context will be developed and validated. Finally a significant contribution will be provided for the monitoring guideline and to the dissemination of the technical results of the project
Belgian Road Research Centre (BRRC)
BRRC has specific know how about an innovative ultra low noise pavement: the poro-elastic road surface (PERS), which was further investigated and developed in the FP7 PERSUADE project. PERS consists of rubber granulates from recycled tyres and stone aggregate which is bound with an elastic resin such as polyurethane. The test track with prefabricated panels performed quite well. The mix formula will be slightly adpated for better ravelling resistance and a small scale test track will be constructed in presumably the city of Ghent (Belgium). A large scale test track will consequently be built in the region of Tuscany. A monitoring program will ensure that all relevant parameters are measured on both test tracks.
Ecopneus
The role of Ecopneus in the NEREiDE project covers a variety of different actions. Since 2011, Ecopneus has been leading several projects aimed at assessing the acoustic performance of rubberized asphalt pavements, the workers’ exposure to rubberized asphalt fumes and -more generally- aimed at developing robust market outlets for ELT-derived rubber. Ecopneus will share its data and specific knowledge on rubberized asphalt pavements thus providing a reference for the outcomes of the monitoring activities that will be carried out under Ecopneus’ supervision within the NEREiDE project. Furthermore, Ecopneus will take care of all the dissemination-related actions, including the creation of a Project’s website, the workshops’ organization, media relations targeting external websites, social media, TVs, newspapers and technical magazines.
CNR- IDASC Istituto di Acustica e Sensoristica "Orso Mario Corbino"
The IDASC-CNR (Institute of Acoustics and Sensors “O.M. Corbino of the National Research Council) mission is to study ultrasounds, acoustic, environmental acoustic and development of transducers, sensors and actuators. In the NEREiDE project its activities are focused on the pavement performance in terms of road noise evaluation. It will be developed a specific new on-site acoustical absorption measuring system that will be built on a mobile laboratory, a vehicle equipped with various instrumentation, able to perform both moving and standing measures and real time data analysis.
Moreover the impact of road noise will be evaluated as it is perceived by people, analyzing psychoacoustical indicators and persons reaction acquired by mean surveys campaigns on site. All the new methodologies for noise measurements will be validated to assess their accuracy and reliability.
Regione Toscana
Regione Toscana identifies and describe the sites for implementing new experimental surfaces. The selection is performed through the description of candidate sites. Draws up of technical documents needed to implement a tender on road pavements, implements the public tender and realizes two laying stage: the first, 2400 m of new pavement, will be completed before the end of 2017 , the second, 2800 m of new pavement, will be completed before the end of 2018. Regione Toscana takes part to definition of guidelines for public and private bodies responsible for road managing on the definition of the tenders for the implementation of mitigation actions and to the definition of a replication and transfer strategy.