New Technologies and Approaches to Controlling the Quality of Flexible Pavement Construction

Project Description

Traditional quality control testing of new pavement layers typically consists of localized random testing of layer density. In this process less than 1 percent of the pavement area is tested. In Project 0-4774 the focus was to develop and evaluate two technologies that provide close to 100 percent coverage of the section under construction. The first technology is instrumented rollers where an accelerometer is placed on the drum of a standard steel wheel vibratory roller. The complete system consists of an accelerometer, a distance measuring device, and specialized software for data acquisition, processing, and display. Field tests were conducted with this prototype unit, and weak spots in the foundation layer can be detected with this system. The second technology is infrared testing to identify low temperature spots in newly placed layers of asphalt. A prototype infrared bar was evaluated in this study. The bar can be attached to the foot plate at the back of the paver. Specialized software displays in real time the temperature profile of the new asphalt layer.

Project Publications

New Technologies for Evaluating Flexible Pavement Construction: Year 1 Report 0-4774-1

Field Evaluation of New Technologies for Measuring Pavement Quality 0-4774-2

New Technologies for Measuring Pavement Quality 0-4774-S

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