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As the living standard improves, diverse new desires arise,
demanding more comfortable and more pleasant living conditions. However, the
surging of the number of vehicles and bigger and speedier traffic trends
unleashed by high-pitched industrialization have gone beyond imagination. As
this contributes to economic progress, the road, one of the social overhead
captial(SOC), is becoming more and more important. More after than not,
however, this tends not to correspond with people's desire for quite, pleasant,
and safe living environment. The number of cars has exceeded ten million in
Korea in 98. The increasing number of vehicles are causing serious problems.
Traffic noise is a typical one. This problem causes serious noise pollution to
us. The ministry of environment has set a policy on regulating the maximum level
of road noise. As a result, soundproofing walls and embankments are under
construction and use of soundproofing materials are being encouraged. However,
there are many problems are involved in installing soundproofing walls such as
the limit of the height of the wall, blocking the view, difficulties in
expanding the road and expensive installing price. In consequence, the people
are sharing the view that silent/porous asphalt is one solution.
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