Improved non-contact 3D field and processing techniques to achieve macrotexture characterisation of pavements

Vikki Edmondson,John Woodward,Michael Lim,Malal Kane,James Martin,Islam Shyha

doi:10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.116693

Vikki Edmondson, John Woodward + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.116693

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Abstract

Macrotexture is required on pavements to provide skid resistance for vehicle safety in wet conditions. Increasingly, correlations between macrotexture measurements captured using non-contact techniques and tyre-pavement contact friction are being investigated in order to enable more robust and widescale measurement and monitoring of skid resistance. There is a notable scarcity of research into the respective accuracy of the non-contact measurement techniques at these scales. This paper compares three techniques: a laser profile scanner, Structure from Motion photogrammetry and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). We use spectral analysis, areal surface texture parameters and 2D cross-correlation analysis to evaluate the suitability of each approach for characterising and monitoring pavement macrotexture. The results show that SfM can produce successful measures of the areal root mean square height (Sq), which represents pavement texture depth and is positively correlated with skid resistance. Significant noise in the TLS data prevented agreement with the laser profiler but we show that new filtering procedures result in significantly improved values for the peak density (Spd) and the arithmetic peak mean curvature (Spc), which together define the shape and distribution of pavement aggregates forming macrotexture. However, filtering the TLS data results in a trade-off with vertical accuracy, thus altering the reliability of Sq. Finally, we show the functional areal parameters Spd and Spc are sensitive to sample size. This means that pavement specimen size of 150 mm × 150 mm or smaller, when used in laboratory or field observations, are inadequate to capture the true value of areal surface texture parameters. The deployment of wider scale approaches such as SfM and spectrally filtered TLS are required in order to successfully capture the functional areal parameters (Spc and Spd) for road surfaces.

Highlights

Adequate texture on the surface of a pavement is required to provide skid resistance or friction at the tyre/road interface for vehicle safety in wet conditions [1,2,3,4]
The Structure from Motion (SfM) and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) Nyquist wavelengths mean the techniques can measure the full range of macrotexture wavelengths and have the potential to measure some part of microtexture below 0.5 mm, this capability should be explored as part of a further research study
Nyquist wavelengths vary between samples, possibly because the techniques are sensitive to pavement surface albedo, environmental conditions, and edge effects

Summary

Introduction

Adequate texture on the surface of a pavement is required to provide skid resistance or friction at the tyre/road interface for vehicle safety in wet conditions [1,2,3,4]. Friction forces generated from the contact of the tyre with texture are a consequence of the viscoelastic deformation of the tyre, and increase in dry conditions with adhesion [6]. Microtexture suspected to induce adhesion, represents the texture components with wavelengths from less than 0.5mm and peak amplitude from 0.001 to 0.5mm. Adhesion is reduced by the phenomenon of viscoplaning [6], where a degree of tyre contact is lost with the pavement due to the presence of a thin water film (in the order of a tenth of a millimetre or less)

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