PCC Surface Characteristics - Rehabilitation MnROAD Study

This report describes an extensive data collection effort, spanning five years, and the subsequent data analysis to evaluate the performance of surface characteristics on portland cement concrete pavements that have been diamond ground with various grinding configurations. The data collected were analyzed and evaluated to observe the longterm performance of the surface characteristics of noise, friction, texture, and ride quality. In addition to the basic analysis and comparison of the performance with respect to the control cell, several other studies were performed such as the correction of noise data with ambient air temperatures at the individual third-octave frequencies and evaluation of trends in the data using various statistical analysis methods. In addition, other surface characteristics were measured to provide a baseline for comparison with potential future measurements, including rolling resistance and advanced texture characteristics. The surface characteristics evaluated indicated immediate changes were effected due to the grinding activity, and that over time (and due to the application of repetitive traffic) these immediate effects were diminished somewhat, in most cases. Based on the immediate and long-term performance of the various grinding configurations, recommendations are made in the report regarding the use of the configurations and areas suggested for further research.