PAVEMENT SKIDDING, PAVEMENT UNEVENESS, PAVEMENT INSTRUMENTATION

5TH MODULE

Pavement skidding
Skid resistance property essential for pavement safety 40% of accidents are caused due to poor skid resistance of pavement surface Skidding is of three types: Straight skidding Impending skidding Sideway skidding

Types of skidding
Straight skidding Occurs in the direction of travel when the sudden brakes are applied Impending skidding Braking is gradual and wheel continues to revolve Sideway skidding Occurs on curves When sufficient super elevation is not provided

Causes and remedies

Causes are Presence of water, clay, dust, dry sand, oil and grease on pavements Presence of polished aggregates Bleeding of excess bitumen, forming patches on the road surface Remedial measure Spreading small aggregates on pavement surface To renew the wearing course

Factors affecting skid resistance

Type of pavement surface
Bituminous surface is more skidding than concrete surface

Macrotexture of pavement and relative roughness

Macrotexture - large-scale texture of the pavement as a whole due to the aggregate particle arrangement controls the escape of water from under the tire and hence the loss of skid resistance with increased speed

Factors affecting skid resistance

Condition of pavement Coefficent of friction reduces when pavement is smooth or wet Type and condition of tyre Smooth and worn out tyres on dry pavement develops higher friction than new tyres More area of contact New tyres with good treads on wet pavements is more safe than smoothened tyres Lubricating effect of water is reduced, water enters into the tread of tyres

Factors affecting skid resistance

Speed of vehicle
As speed increases, friction coefficent decreases

Brake efficency
Increased brake efficency, friction coefficent decreases

Tyre pressure
Coefficent of friction decreases slightly with increase in tyre pressure

Factors affecting skid resistance

Temperature of tyre and pavement
When temperature increases, friction coefficent decreases

Type of skid, if any

Low value for transverse skid resistance Essential to prevent lateral skid

Skid resistance
Can be measured by Pendulum type friction tester Skid testing device attached to test vehicle Instrument mounted dynamic skid resistance tester towed by another vehicle

Locked Wheel Tester

Basically, this method uses a locked wheel skidding along the tested surface to measure friction resistance.

 A typical lock-wheel skid measurement system must have the following: A test vehicle with one or more test wheels incorporated into it or as part of a towed trailer. A standard tire for use on the test wheel A means to transport water (usually 750 to 1900) and the necessary apparatus to deliver it in front of the test wheel at test speed A transducer associated with the test wheel, senses the force developed between the skidding test wheel and the pavement Electronic signal conditioning equipment to receive the transducer output signal and modify it as required

 Suitable analog and/or digital readout equipment to record either the magnitude of the developed force or the calculated value of the resulting Skid Number (SN)
To take a measurement, The vehicle (or trailer) is brought to the desired testing speed (typically 64 km/hr (40 mph)) Water is sprayed ahead of the test tire to create a wetted pavement surface. The test tire braking system is then actuated to lock the test tire. Instrumentation measures the friction force acting between the test tire and the pavement and reports the result as a Skid Number (SN).

 Friction factor (like a coefficient of friction): f = F/L Skid number: SN = 100(f) where, F = frictional resistance to motion in plane of interface L = load perpendicular to interface Skid Number & Comments < 30 : Take measures to correct 30 : Acceptable for low volume roads 31 34 : Monitor pavement frequently 35 : Acceptable for heavily traveled roads

Pavement unevenness/ Roughness

Expression of irregularities in the pavement surface that adversely affect the ride quality of a vehicle It affects not only ride quality but also vehicle delay costs, fuel consumption and maintenance costs.

Pavement uneveness affects

Vehicle operating cost Comfort Safety Fuel consumption Wear and tear of tyres Wear and tear of other moving parts Fatigue and accidents

All the above factors increase when unevenness increase

Factors causing unevenness

Inadequate or improper compaction of the fill, subgrade and pavement layers Un scientific construction practices including the use of boulder stones and bricks as soling over loose subgrade Use of inferior quality pavement materials Improper surface and subsurface drainage Use of improper construction machinery Poor maintenance practices Localized failures due to combination of causes

Pavement unevenness
Can be measured by

Bump integrator Cumulative measure of vertical undulations of pavement surface recorded per unit horizontal length of road Less than 150cm/km : for high speed highways Upto 250cm/km : for speed upto 100km/hr More than 350cm/km : very uncomfortable even for 50km/hr
By using a straight edge Extent of number of depressions or ruts along and across the pavement

Bump integrator/Automatic Road Unevenness Recorder

 It comprises of a standard pneumatic wheel mounted within a rectangular frame Integrating unit, mounted on one side of the frame integrates the unevenness in cm. For the measurement, it is towed by a jeep at a constant speed of 32 kmph under standard tyre pressure of 2.1 kg/cm2 along the designated wheel path Bumps in cm and corresponding road length in terms of wheel revolution pulses are displayed / recorded on a panel board Unevenness index(UI) is calculated in terms of mm/km

Vehicle Mounted Bump Integrator

 This Vehicle Mounted Bump Integrator consists of an integrating unit which is mounted in the dicky on the rear axle of a car/jeep. Integrating unit, mounted on the dicky integrates the unevenness in cm or pulses. For the measurement vehicle is run at a constant speed of 32 kmph Bumps in cm or pulses and corresponding road length in meters are recorded on a computer based data acquisition system

Profilometer
a measuring instrument used to measure a surface's profile, in order to quantify its roughness They are of two types: Contact profilometers Non-contact profilometers

Sketch of stylus profilometer

Contact profilometers
A diamond stylus is moved vertically in contact with a sample Then moved laterally across the sample for a specified distance and specified contact force. A profilometer can measure small surface variations in vertical stylus displacement. A typical profilometer can measure small vertical features ranging in height from 10 nanometres to 1 millimetre.

Contact profilometers
The height position of the diamond stylus generates an analog signal which is converted into a digital signal stored, analyzed and displayed. The horizontal resolution is controlled by the scan speed and data signal sampling rate.

Advantages of contact profilometers

Acceptance: Most of the world's surface finish standards are written for contact profilometers Surface Independence: Contacting the surface is often an advantage in dirty environments where noncontact methods can end up measuring surface contaminants instead of the surface itself Direct Technique: No modeling required

Non-contact profilometers
An optical profilometer is a non-contact method for providing much of the same information Optical profiling uses the wave properties of light to compare the optical path difference between a test surface and a reference surface Inside an optical interference profiler, a light beam is split, reflecting half the beam from a test material which is passed through the focal plane of a microscope objective, and the other half of the split beam is reflected from the reference mirror.

 When the distance from the beam splitter to the reference mirror is the same distance as the beam splitter is from the test surface and the split beams are recombined, constructive and destructive interference occurs in the combined beam wherever the length of the light beams vary

This creates the light and dark bands known as interference fringes

Advantages of optical profilometers

Optical profilers are inherently three dimensional: they measure height (the Z-axis) over an area of X and Y lateral dimensions. Stylus profilometers are inherently linear Every pixel in the imaging camera is a datum: its optical path difference is calculated relative to each adjacent pixel, by comparing the contrast between them Stylii wear out, or need to be changed for varying surface conditions. Accuracy of the optical path difference is essential to good non-contact profilometry

 The data collected by a profilometer is used to calculate the International Roughness Index (IRI) which is expressed in units of inches/mile or mm/m. IRI values range from 0 (equivalent to driving on a plate of glass) upwards to several hundred in/mi (a very rough road).

The IRI value is used for road management to monitor road safety and quality issues.