The Lamont Test Road - Twelve Years of Performance Monitoring

In the early 1990’s significant efforts were initiated, in support of the Canadian Strategic Highway Research Program (C-SHRP), towards the construction of three Canadian test roads located at Lamont, Alberta, Hearst, Ontario, and Sherbrooke, Quebec. The main objective of these test roads was to enhance the understanding of asphalt cement characteristics related to low temperature cracking and to correlate the field performance of asphalt cements to the 1990 Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) specification. This paper deals with the main test road near Lamont. Seven different test sections were constructed, each using a markedly different grade of asphalt cement. Of the seven asphalt cements, five were conventionally refined while two were modified through the process of air blowing. The asphalt cements were tested and classified according to the CGSB specifications and have subsequently been classified using Superpave Performance Grade (PG) test procedures. Instrumentation was installed to collect on-site ambient and pavement temperatures during the first three winters of service. Temperature data from the nearest local weather station has also been collected on a yearly basis. This paper provides a summary of the in-service performance results, particularly in regards to transverse cracking, and how closely the results relate to the CGSB and Superpave specifications.