Mitigating roadside noise while maintaining effectiveness of shoulder and centerline rumble strips

• Analysis of roadside and internal noise of 10 shoulder and centerline rumble strips. • Field measurements using 13 vehicles that represent all vehicle types on U.S. roads. • Noise measurements followed AASHTO Statistical Isolated Pass-by and SAE J1477 standard. • Six rumble strip designs reduced roadside noise by a range of 1.4 to 9.0 dBA. • All ten rumble strip designs generated effective in-vehicle noise to warn drivers. This study constructed and field-tested ten shoulder and centerline rumble strip designs to evaluate their performance in reducing roadside noise and satisfying the NCHRP recommendations for in-vehicle noise increase to alert inattentive drivers. The external and in-vehicle noise measurements were collected using thirteen vehicles that include gasoline, hybrid, and electric sedans as well as SUVs, minivan, pick-up trucks, box trucks, and heavy semi-trailer truck to represent all vehicles on U.S. roads. The findings confirmed that all ten rumble strip designs generated in-vehicle noise increases within the 3–15 dBA range recommended by NCHRP. For shoulder rumble strips, the results showed that four sinusoidal designs and one traditional design reduced roadside noise by a range of 1.4–9.0 dBA compared to the baseline traditional design. For centerline rumble strips, the same four sinusoidal designs and another traditional design reduced roadside noise by 1.7–8.3 dBA compared to the baseline traditional design.