Evaluation of pavement skid resistance using high speed texture measurement

Skid resistance is an important parameter for highway designs, construction, management, maintenance and safety. The purpose of this manuscript is to propose the correlation between skid resistance, which is measured as skid resistance trailer, and mean profile depth （MPD） or the macro surface texture, which is measured by vehicle mounted laser, so that highway agencies can predict the skid resistance of pavement without the use of expensive and time consuming skid resistance trailer, which also causes disruption of traffic in use. In this research skid numbers and MPD from 5 new asphalt pavements and 4 old asphalt pavements were collected using a locked wheel skid trailer and a vehicle mounted laser. Using the data collected, a correlation between the skid number （SN40R） collected by locked wheel skid tester and the texture data or MPD collected by a vehicle mounted laser operating at highway speeds was developed. The proposed correlation for new pavements was positive for MPD values less than 0.75 mm to reach a peak SN40R value, then there was a negative correlation as the MPD increases until the MPD value was equal to 1.1 mm and beyond the MPD value of 1.1 mm to the maximum value of 1.4 mm, SN40R value remained almost constant. There were significant data scatter for the MPD value of 0.8 mm. To explain these results, water film thickness during the friction test was calculated and the critical MPD was defined. The effect of sealed water pool on the SN40R was discussed. The test result showed a similar trend for older asphalt pavements, but with lower SN40R values due to the polishing of pavement micro-texture by traffic. Hence, a reduction factor was proposed for older pavements based on cumulative traffic volume for the above correlation to predict the skid resistance of older pavements.

Characterization of pavement texture by means of height difference correlation and relation to wet skid resistance

Driving safety is of utmost importance in the automobile industry and is acknowledged by the introduction of the tire wet grip index as part of the EU tire label. The rubber pavement interaction is determined by the viscoelastic properties of the rubber as well as by the pavement texture. Nowadays available optical surface profiling instruments allow for a detailed measurement of surface roughness covering several length scales. This enables the validation of a mathematical statistical description of pavement texture within the framework of self-affine surfaces and hence provides a holistic characterization of surface roughness covering several length scales within a few characteristic parameters. We deduce within this article the correlation between classical surface roughness pa- rameters and the parameter set of self-affine surfaces. These parameters allow for a detailed understanding of the relationship between pavement texture and its wet skid resistance. We present wet skid resistance measurements with the British pendulum and a linear friction tester device on different pavement textures. We demonstrate that the so- called estimated texture depth does not correlate to the surface skid resistance measured with the British pendulum. Finally, we deduce a dependency of wet skid resistance on pavement texture which is supported by current models for hysteresis friction.

Study on micro-texture and skid resistance of aggregate during polishing

The skid resistance performance of pavement is closely related to the micro-texture of pavement aggregate, while there is very few research on the relationship between micro-texture and the skid resistance. In this paper, the optical microscope is used to acquire the surface morphology of three types of aggregates including basalt, limestone and red sandstone respectively, where a total of 12 indicators are developed based on the surface texture information. The polishing effect on aggregate is simulated by Wehner/Schulze （W/S） device, during the polishing procedure, the skid resistance are measured by British Pendulum Tester （BPT）. Based on the results of independent T-test and the polishing resistance analysis, it shows that the surface texture of basalt is significantly different between limestone and red sandstone. Three indicators including the average roughness （Ra）, the kurtosis of the surface （Sku） and the mean summit curvature （Ssc） are selected to describe the characteristics of aggregate micro-texture based on the correlation analysis. The contribution of micro-texture to the skid resistance can be described with the secondary polynomial regression model by these indicators.