In 1997, ISO first published a standard to measure and monitor the influence of road surfaces on traffic noise. Advances in technology and changing needs have led to the recent development of ISO 11819-2, Acoustics – Measurement of the influence of road surfaces on traffic noise – Part 2: The close-proximity method.
Project leader for the new standard, Ulf Sandberg, said “the new methodology is much more practical and easier to use, especially for long stretches of road.”
This new method also led to the development of technical specification ISO/TS 11819-3 on reference tires.
“We were developing the new ISO 11819-2 when we realized that we also needed to identify tires correctly to give reliable and reproducible data, so we created ISO/TS 11819-3,” Sandberg said.
The ISO committee developing these standards went even further and developed ISO/TS 13471-1, to account for the influence of temperature when measuring tire and road noise.
“The need to control road noise is getting more and more attention,” Sandberg said. “The European Commission, for example, now requires that member states regularly report traffic noise emission along major roads and that they develop abatement programmes if these are found to be excessive. The three new documents offer a solid toolbox for identifying the contribution of road surfaces to noise pollution.”
ISO 11819-2, ISO/TS 11819-3, and ISO/TS 13471-1 are available from national ISO members or through the ISO Store. The documents were developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 43, Acoustics, whose secretariat is held by DIN, ISO’s member for Germany.