PAVEMENT SKIDDING,

PAVEMENT UNEVENESS,

PAVEMENT INSTRUMENTATION
5
TH
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 non-
contact 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.