Pavement texture from high-speed laser for pavement management system

Abstract

The locked-wheel skid trailer (ASTM E274) is commonly used to estimate the skid resistance of pavements in the United States. However, this method is very expensive and disturbs the traffic flows during the test. Hence, a correlation was developed between skid resistance or skid number (SN40R) values obtained using skid tester and the texture data or mean profile depth (MPD), collected using a vehicle-mounted laser operating at highway speeds from nine highway test sections. This paper describes two field tests performed to validate the above-mentioned Skid Resistance versus MPD correlation and to also develop a rapid screening methodology for skid resistance of a network of pavements. In addition to the locked-wheel skid trailer and vehicle-mounted laser, several other tests such as the Dynamic Friction Test (DFT), circular texture meter (CTM) and sand patch tests were also performed. The MPD values obtained from the vehicle-mounted laser operating at highway speeds and cumulative daily traffic volumes for each pavement were used to estimate the equivalent SN40R values. The measured and estimated SN40R values compared well with a maximum variance of less than 5. The proposed screening methodology to estimate skid numbers from measured texture data was embedded into computer code and was incorporated into the Pavement Management System for rapid screening of skid resistance.

Keywords:

• pavement management system
• skid resistance
• high-speed laser
• locked-wheel skid trailer
• pavement texture
• mean profile depth

Acknowledgements

This research was sponsored by a research contract from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT). The contents of this paper reflect the views of authors, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the information presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of NJIT, NJDOT or FHWA. This paper does not constitute a standard, specification or regulation. The authors wish to acknowledge the efforts of the NJDOT Project Manager Mr Vincent Nichnadowicz, and also the contributions of NJDOT Manager of the Bureau of Research Ms Camille Crichton-Sumners, Dr Geoff Rowe of ABATech, Mr Jiannan Chen, Mr Eugene Maina and Mr Manan Shah of NJIT and Mr Hadi Pezeshki, of FHWA. Authors would also like to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers who provided extremely helpful comments, which resulted in substantially enhanced paper.

Notes

^1. [email protected]

^2. [email protected]

^3. [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shengyan Gao

1 1. [email protected]

Sim Liu

2 2. [email protected]

Nicholas C. Gephart

3 3. [email protected]