Road polishing assessment methodology 'TROWS'

Michel Gothie (1) , Minh Tan Do (2)

1 CETE de Lyon - Centre d'études techniques de l'équipement de Lyon
2 LCPC/ESAR - Division Entretien, Sécurité et Acoustique des Routes

Both tire wear and road polishing are complex phenomenon, which are obviously strongly related; the energy that polishes the road is the energy that wears the tire. They both depend non-linearly on numerous parameters, like materials used, vehicle and road usage, environmental conditions (e.g., temperature) and many others. Due to their many economic and ecological implications, including those concerning the road users safety, the possibility to predict them is of major importance to tire manufacturers, fleet owners, road authorities and governments. Based on these observations, in 2000 we started the three-year 5th framework EU project TROWS (Tyre and ROad Wear and Slip assessment). The results include tools to analyze tire wear and road polishing. These will be combined in a suitable wear prediction environment. This paper focuses on the followed methods and results of TROWS for road polishing. Using available databases a detailed analysis of the different types of road surfaces has been performed to evaluate the relationship between the type of road surface and the evolution of skid resistance. These general studies have given some input to support the selection of the best road surfaces to be used in special carousel tests, as well as to assess the representativeness of the road circuit for the passenger and truck driving tests made also in the TROWS project to study the tire wear. Three types of BFC alterations according to accumulated traffic, led to three particular surfaces to be used for the wear tests on the LCPC carousel in Nantes: a AC 0/14, a Very Thin AC 0/10 and a Very Thin AC 0/6. The main objective of the experiments carried out on the Carousel test tracks was the assessment of tire and road polishing under pure cornering maneuvers. Two tables were built with marks characterizing the aggressiveness of the road surfaces on tires and of the aggressiveness of tires on the road surface. These marks were based on road engineer’s expertise and calculated with the data collected on the Italian road circuit. With the experiment carried out on the Italian public road circuit we obtained good correlations between the polishing parameters due to traffic and the evolution of the polishing state of the various surfaces of the circuit. These various elements could be used in management models to make choice of techniques to use easier, and to determine the time when the works will prove necessary.

Mots clés: CHAUSSEE; ADHERENCE; MACROTEXTURE; MICROTEXTURE; FROTTEMENT

Domaines: Mécanique [physics.med-ph]

Michel Gothie, Minh Tan Do. Road polishing assessment methodology 'TROWS'. XXIIth PIARC World Road Congress, Oct 2003, South Africa. 10p., graphiques, ill. en coul., graphiques. ⟨hal-00851423⟩