Using the visual intervention influence of pavement markings for rutting mitigation–part I: preliminary experiments and field tests

ABSTRACT

The wheel tracks on highways are excessively concentrated and lead to rutting on asphalt pavements, which reduces the service life of highway pavements. A new method is proposed, which uses the visual intervention of pavement markings to redistribute the wheel track and adopts a three-stage process to relieve the stress caused by axial load concentration. This method is more suitable for existing highway pavements because the cost is considerably less than that of repaving. We first conducted preliminary experiments to determine the optimum design of pavement marking, and the driving safety was found to be at an acceptable level based on the steering behaviour and vehicle acceleration analysis. Second, field tests of the method on an operational highway are carried out, and the transverse offset of the wheel track is analysed using the video analysis technique. Based on the field test results, the visual intervention is proven to shift the wheel track concentration area effectively to relieve the rutting problem, without compromising driving safety. Hence, the proposed transverse visual intervention method has the potential to prolong the asphalt pavement service life by 16–31%, which has been demonstrated in a companion (Part II) paper based on a finite element simulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual intervention
• rutting
• pavement marking
• wheel track distribution
• pavement service life

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Gang Wu is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include traffic safety and infrastructure engineering.

Feng Chen received Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA in 2011. He is currently an Associate Professor with the College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include traffic safety, vehicle dynamic model, reliability analysis, GIS and wind Engineering. From 2012 until now, he served as the PI of about 10 research grants funded by various national and provincial agencies, including NSFC and Ministry of Education.

Xiaodong Pan received Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the Ehime University, Ehime, Japan in 1998. He is currently a Professor with the College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include traffic safety, human factor and infrastructure design.

Ming Xu received Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the Tongji University, Shanghai, China in 2015. He is currently a Senior Engineer with the Wuhan City Department of Transportation.

Xingyi Zhu received Ph.D. degree in Structure Engineering from the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2011. She is currently an Associate Professor with the College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Her research interests include multi-scale analysis and numerical simulation of road materials and structures, composite/smart road materials and structures. She has served as the PI of about 10 research grants funded by various national and provincial agencies, including NSFC and STCSM.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51508409], [grant number 51578417]; the Program for Young Excellent Talents in Tongji University; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.