Monitoring The Condition of Surfacing Seals With Nondestructive Tests at Field

Abstract

Surfacing seal is an asphalt pavement type preferred because of its simplicity of application and economic viability. It enables waterproof surfaces for sub-layers and creates smooth and high skid resistance for vehicles. Therefore, surfacing seals constructed on unbound base are widely used such as New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. However the performance of surfacing seals can be affected by a number of factors. If these factors are not considered, they will need to be reconstructed after a very short period. In this study, performances of surfacing seals under heavy traffic were observed for 2 years, and routine tests were performed to determine the surfacing seal's performance in relation to traffic and climate and to determine the kind of deteriorations which occurred. In this study variety of test such as sand-patch, British pendulum, density measurement with electromagnetic method, measuring surface temperature with thermal camera, light weight deflectometer, dynamic cone penetration test and layer thickness measurement were performed with ground penetrating radar technique. The results of the study show that loss of macro texture, and raveling and flushing are the most common types of deterioration especially at road sections with longitudinal slope. Furthermore, skid numbers decrease during the rainy seasons when the bearing capacity of layers also decreases, the trend of raveling deterioration decreases at roads with high traffic volume and average maximum surface temperature. However, it was determined that trend of flushing deterioration increase.