Evaluation of Global Positioning System Devices for a Quality Control System for Compaction Operations

Quality control of the compaction process is an important concern for owners and contractors because compaction is essential for improving the stability and density of construction materials such as soils and asphalt. When other conditions such as roller frequency, wheel load, and compactor speed are the same, the density of asphalt pavement depends on the number of coverages of the compactor. If the mat is compacted with less than the determined number of passes, the result may be a large volume of air voids, leading to low density. However, if the mat is overly compacted, the aggregates will be crushed further and the attributes of the mix will be changed, leading to a reduction in density. For this reason, monitoring the exact number of coverages over the entire surface of the pavement mat is desired. Research that started 3 years ago to develop an automated system for mapping compaction equipment using global positioning system (GPS) technology is reported. The objective of this research is to test the GPS receiver under various conditions of compaction operations. The researchers conclude that the accuracy of GPS devices selected should be better than 15 cm, the typical asphalt coverage overlap.