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- [Narrator] Traffic Speed Deflection Devices, or TSDDs,
reduce safety hazards associated
with traditional stop and go weight devices
by measuring conditions
while traveling at normal speeds on the road.
Working with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute,
the Texas Department of Transportation
has incorporated TSDD data from over 1,000 miles of travel
into a tool for project level
pavement management applications.
- We're trying to make better decisions
on how to fix roadways.
We want to do the right fix at the right time,
so for that, to make that possible,
we've gotta know the strength of the highway.
We've got more and more trucks on our roads
that are tearing things up.
We need to know the strength so we know how to fix them
and how to strengthen them.
To the regular, just general person in the public,
there'll not be as many repairs
and as lane closures as you're seeing right now.
- The current technology we are using
is called the falling weight deflectometer,
that requires traffic control
and then a stop and go operation.
So this new technology bring in the potential
to improve the safety, not to the general public,
but also our operation team, and then be more efficient
since it doesn't really require stop and go,
it runs at the highway speed.
- [Tom] TxDOT, on an annual basis,
rates the conditions of its roadways.
They rate it by the amount of cracks in the roadway,
how rough the roads are,
but they don't have any structural strength data.
How strong is the road?
- [Jenny] The traffic speed deflection device
is a new technology that introduced to US market
about, like a decade ago.
Different from the traditional
deflection data collection technology,
this new technology can go at highway speed
and collecting continuous deflection data.
- [Tom] These devices will give you
the same information at 60 miles an hour.
So with this device, you can cover 400 miles a day
with a falling weight, that would take you 10 days to do.
So it really makes things faster
and it makes things safer.
- [Jenny] It allows engineers, look both, surface conditions
and the structured conditions
to make pavement treatment decisions.
It opens the possibilities to utilize
the structure condition data for the entire network.
- The benefit to the public
is that providing this information,
TxDOT will be able to make better decisions
about how to repair the roads.
In the background, TxDOT spends a lot of time
maintaining roads
and they do some very thin treatments like seal coats,
and the road may look good,
but when they come and do the strength measurement,
you see it's not good.
So they can now make better decisions
on how to do long-term repairs to highways.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.