New Procedure for Selecting Chemical Treatments for Unpaved Roads

Abstract

There is increasing interest in the use of chemical treatments to reduce maintenance and gravel replacement on gravel roads. However, the choice of the most appropriate chemical treatment is difficult because of the proprietary nature of many of the available treatments. A new approach to the selection of an appropriate chemical treatment is based on the practitioner's understanding of the roads that require treatment in terms of traffic, climate, geometry, and materials; of the different chemical treatment categories; and of the objective for applying a chemical treatment. From the information collected, the most appropriate chemical treatment categories for a given situation can be selected from a series of charts and ranked by using a simple arithmetical formula. The ability to rank the treatments available differentiates this procedure from previous procedures documented in the literature. The selection can be refined by evaluating expected performance with prediction charts that are based on material properties determined from the same simple, inexpensive laboratory tests required as inputs to the selection procedure.