Automated Groove Identification and Measurement for Next Generation Concrete Surface (NGCS) Using 3D Pavement Data at 1 mm Resolution

Pavement safety has been a principal concern of transportation agencies, while tire-pavement noise has also gained increasing attentions in recent years. To suppress the impacts of tire-pavement noise on road users, an innovative hybrid texture technique for concrete surface that resembles a combination of diamond grinding and longitudinal grooving, Next Generation Concrete Surface (NGCS), is developed for quieter traveling and improved safety. Since the grooved texture may deteriorate over time, the measurement of groove dimensions becomes an indispensable tool for NGCS's long term performance evaluation. Traditional point laser based profiling system is used to measure pavement transverse grooves. However this technique is incapable of evaluating longitudinal grooves that are used in NGCS. This paper proposes an automated groove identification and measurement methodology for NGCS using 1mm resolution 3D pavement surface data collected from the recently developed PaveVision3D Ultra System. A template matched groove identification algorithm is proposed to detect and identify the longitudinal grooves for NGCS. Subsequently, the groove dimensions are estimated based on an established procedure. Comparing the constructed NGCS groove dimensions with the estimated dimensions derived from this research, it is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is robust in detecting longitudinal NGCS grooves and estimating their dimensions. Further research is anticipated to investigate the groove dimensions on NGCS's noise level and safety performance over time.