Abstract

Everyone has some compassion toward drivers who become victims of pavement slipperiness. The development of slipperiness on a road surface follows one of the laws of nature. Why not, then, employ other laws provided by nature to better advantage? For example, craftsmen use grinders, abrasives, buffers, etc. to achieve glossy surface finishes. Traffic does the same to our pavements. We might employ craftsmens' routine in reverse -- that is, roughen the surface. Better still, the principles that are apparent in a grinding wheel or whetstone may be used as a model for our pavement surface: a material of hard, abrasive granules glued together. If the glue is too hard, the abrasive particles themselves become dull and polished, the pores clog, and the wheel will not cut. A wheel or hone designed to do a specific job must be able to let go of a dulled particle and expose a new, sharper particle from underneath. In other words, the wheel must undergo a controlled type of wear -- or else be dressed and re-roughened periodically. This is the analogy of a hot-mixed sand-asphalt pavement surface.

Report Date

11-1968

Report Number

No. 271

Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.13023/KTC.RR.1968.271

Notes

Prepared for Twentieth Annual Kentucky Highway Conference, University of Kentucky (November 19, 1968).

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