RELATIONS BETWEEN DIFFERENT FACTORS IN GRAVEL ROAD MAINTENANCE

The purpose of the investigation was to determine relationships between maintenance operations such as grading, dust binding, gravel spreading and watering and the factors influencing these operations. The work was limited to summer conditions. The factors involved were traffic flow, road section length and width, alignment, meteorological data and gravel material. The method of analysis for obtaining the relations was multiple regression. A measure of the extent to which the assumed model agreed with quantities consumed was the multiple correlation coefficient, varying between 0 and 1. The values of grading, dust binding, gravel spreading and watering were 0.51, 0.39, 0.28 and 0.73. The low value representing gravel spreading reflects the irregular distribution in time of this operation. The relations between the different maintenance operations were also tested. Thus grading and dust binding are considered interchangeable, a hypothesis which was not supported by the present analysis. /TRRL/