(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Are secrets regarding
long term pavement performance
hidden away in TxDOT databases?
Researchers with the Center for Transportation Research
at the University of Texas,
have conducted an extensive analysis
about specific project information from across the state.
The researchers are combining data sources
in hopes of improving construction practices.
- There's an old adage that you cannot improve
what you cannot measure, right?
So that was the first idea.
The motivation was to be able to measure
what is the performance of materials in the long term.
Now, when we drive on roads,
they all look the same to us,
and they may be slightly different texture,
or color, or variations, but we don't think much of it.
But there's a lot of engineering and technology
that is going on in the material side of the business
and the construction mixture, design, and so forth,
and all although we do not see, as users of the roadways,
we do not see those changes,
there's a constant evolution of technologies
and polymer modification,
use of recycled materials and so forth.
But one of the things is, it's very difficult
in a laboratory environment to evaluate
what is the real world long term outcome
of these changes in technology.
So, and the only way you could do it is,
by long term evaluation of field performance.
So, the idea here was to see that the materials
and mixture design technologies, the specifications that we
are putting into place and constantly adjusting based on,
things that are happening in the industry,
how are they turning out in the long term,
five years, 10 years, 15 years
from after they've been placed?
- Historically, we've got multiple databases,
where we store performance data
and we store construction data.
And they're two different databases.
So in our construction database,
that's where we capture everything like mixed designs,
material quality, as it's being constructed.
And that also takes into account placement of the material.
There are other databases, the maintenance database,
and that's where our maintenance crew go out over time
and they're looking at the performance
of the actual in place roadway.
And so our goal from this research project
was to tie our construction practices and material quality
and try to tie that into real-world performance.
- The object for this research is essentially, two folds.
One to identify and good examples
and also best practices and that would allow us
to relay the long term temporal performance
with the QC/QA design factors.
And then secondly and provide additional recommendations
in terms of good like examples and best practices.
And so the Texas can keep improving the experiment
along life experience.
- We are trying to find out.
What is the best material combination
the construction practice that can give us the more value
so that we don't have to have a lot of rehabilitation
or maintenance activities down in the future?
- One of the things, what we would like to see happen
is that this should go live
in the sense should be a real time thing
or a near real time thing that is constantly updated
and is accessible to DOT on a nearly daily basis.
So, you know, they could visit this often
and look at it often.
The reason for that is our mixture designs
and specifications and materials are not static.
And by bringing life to this or making this alive
as a real time and dynamic thing that sustains itself,
the DOT will then have a tool that they can see
how these things are performing over time for themselves.
- [Narrator] For more information,
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT research library
at the link shown below.