Evaluation of Pavement Surface Friction Treatments

The implementation of a pavement preservation program involves a learning curve with not only a determination to succeed, but also the courage to fail. Successful implementation of pavement preservation program requires knowledge of the performance of pavement preservation surface treatments over time, which is critical to the development of performance models for pavement management analysis. Additionally, preservation surface treatments, such as chip seal, fog seal, microsurfacing, and 4.75-mm thin or ultrathin overlay, can not only repair certain pavement surface defects, but also change the surface characteristics of pavement and therefore affect pavement surface friction performance. Nevertheless, such information is currently not available but is essential for the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) to evaluate the effectiveness of pavement preservation surface treatments. As a concentrated effort, this study focused on the long-term friction performance of preservation surface treatments, particularly those have been widely used and those have seen increasing use by INDOT. Based on the selected field pavement test sections, this study aimed to evaluate the surface characteristics, particularly the long-term friction performance for the surface treatments, such as chip seal, fog-chip, fog seal, rejuvenating seal, microsurfacing, ultrathin bonded wearing course (UBWC), 4.75-mm hot mix asphalt (HMA) thin overlay (UTO), and profile milling (or diamond grinding). The test sections for each type of surface treatment covered a wide range of traffic volume from light to high. The service life for the selected test sections varied from 6 months to 60 months. Friction testing was mainly conducted using ASTM E 274 locked wheel trailer. Surface texture testing was conducted using either the ASTM E 2157 circular track meter (CTM) or a laser scanner. Pavement roughness and noise tests were also conducted to address the smoothness and noise issues, particularly on microsurfacing. Detailed analysis was provided to evaluate the friction performance of 4.75-mm HMA thin overlays. It is believed that the test results and findings drawn from this study not only provides timely information for INDOT to improve its pavement preservation program, but also provides the original information for the potential readers to better utilize preservation surface treatments.