An acoustic sensor system for determination of macroscopic surface roughness

Author

Swart, Pieter L. ; Lacquet, Beatrys M. ; Blom, Christiaan

Author_Institution

Fac. of Eng., Rand Afrikaans Univ., Johannesburg, South Africa

Volume

45

Issue

5

fYear

1996

fDate

10/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

879

Lastpage

884

Abstract

In this paper, an alternative technique for the measurement of roughness of road surfaces is proposed. This noncontact method is based on the scattering of acoustic waves from the road surface and measuring the normalized Fourier spectrum of the scattered wave in the specular direction. Surfaces prepared with different size aggregates ranging from 2.36 mm to 25 mm were analyzed. The roughness parameter of a surface increases linearly with increasing aggregate size. The proposed method can possibly be extended to perform in situ surface roughness measurements from a moving vehicle

Keywords

acoustic signal processing; acoustic transducers; acoustic wave scattering; surface topography measurement; acoustic sensor system; macroscopic surface roughness; noncontact method; normalized Fourier spectrum; road surfaces; roughness parameter; scattering; specular direction; Acoustic measurements; Acoustic scattering; Acoustic sensors; Acoustic waves; Aggregates; Performance evaluation; Roads; Rough surfaces; Surface acoustic waves; Surface roughness;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Instrumentation and Measurement, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9456

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/19.536705

Filename

536705