Pavement Profiler Evaluation Facility

Located at the Texas A&M RELLIS Campus, TTI’s Pavement Profiler Evaluation Facility was set up to aid in the evaluation, support and implementation of profiling products, technology and initiatives. Initially constructed in 1999, the facility has a 2000-ft long dense-graded hot-mix asphalt (HMA) test track on which inertial profiler certifications are conducted to support state implementation of ride specifications and pavement management activities. With funding from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, two additional test tracks were built in 2013 that added continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) and open-graded HMA sections on which inertial profiler evaluations may be conducted. In 2015, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute added another section with a stone-matrix asphalt (SMA) surface. Over the years, the facility has been used to test inertial profilers from U.S. state departments of transportation, FHWA, profile equipment manufacturers, and international consulting firms.

Facility Services

The Pavement Profiler Evaluation Facility provides the following services:

• Pavement management activities support:
  To ensure the quality of smoothness data collected over the highway network and reported in pavement management databases, equipment for measuring longitudinal and transverse profiles needs to be regularly tested to establish profiler accuracy and repeatability. Currently, TxDOT uses the facility to test and maintain its fleet of profilers that are used in annual pavement condition surveys.
• Smoothness specification implementation support:
  As state DOTs move toward implementing inertial profile-based smoothness specifications, contractors and engineers need a facility to help them test and maintain equipment for verifying compliance with specification requirements. TTI uses the facility to administer TxDOT’s inertial profiler certification protocol as specified in TxDOT Test Method Tex-1001-S, thereby supporting implementation of TxDOT’s new ride specification, which requires certified inertial profilers for quality assurance testing of the final surface smoothness. State DOTs can also use the facility to certify profilers under AASHTO R-56.
• Equipment development and product evaluation support:
  The Pavement Profiler Evaluation facility can support profile equipment development efforts by providing services to assist developers in field-testing prototypes prior to marketing. It can also provide services to assist end users in testing profiler capabilities before use on pavement construction or rehabilitation projects. These services are tailored to the specific needs of the clients.