About the Facility

For the traveling public, the quality of a road is gauged by how smooth it “rides.” While this may be largely subjective, measurable roadway characteristics such as pavement roughness or road profile are strongly related to this perception of ride quality. In fact, smooth road profiles have become a standard measure of pavement quality. Smooth roads are associated with lower road user costs, favorable user perceptions of quality and acceptability, longer pavement service lives, and lower life-cycle costs.

State departments of transportation (DOTs) around the nation are implementing end-result smoothness specifications for their quality control/quality assurance (QC/QA) programs. Highway contractors and profile service providers are investing in profiling devices for construction quality control to achieve target levels of smoothness on paving projects as well as for acceptance testing of the final surface. Most tests are presently conducted using automated, California-type profilographs in which the equipment is pushed over a prescribed wheelpath. However, a growing number of states have either implemented or are in the process of developing smoothness specifications that are based on inertial profilers that offer more accurate measurements of surface profile than the profilograph, and are faster and safer to use. Basic descriptions of methods for measuring profiles are given by Sayers and Karamihas in their “The Little Book of Profiling”.

In recent years, the profiling market has seen a wider variety of available equipment, from the traditional van-mounted inertial profilers, to lightweight devices that are mounted on tractors or golf carts, portable high-speed profilers that may be mounted on any vehicle, and manually driven walking profilers that provide filtered or unfiltered profiles. Located near the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s (TTI’s) skid resistance test track, TTI’s Ride/Rut facility was developed to aid in the evaluation, support and implementation of profiling products, technology and initiatives. Constructed in 1999, the facility has about a 2000 ft long asphalt pavement test track on which unfiltered longitudinal profiles are maintained on two wheelpaths. Over this length, the facility provides two 0.1-mile test sections with sufficient lead-ins and lead-outs for evaluating inertial profilers. Adjacent to the test track are test sections with raised steel beams of different heights for verifying and calibrating the rut bars on inertial profilers owned and operated by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

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