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(upbeat music)

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- [Narrator] Are secrets regarding

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long term pavement performance

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hidden away in TxDOT databases?

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Researchers with the Center
for Transportation Research

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at the University of Texas,

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have conducted an extensive analysis

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about specific project
information from across the state.

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The researchers are combining data sources

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in hopes of improving
construction practices.

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- There's an old adage
that you cannot improve

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what you cannot measure, right?

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So that was the first idea.

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The motivation was to be able to measure

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what is the performance of
materials in the long term.

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Now, when we drive on roads,

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they all look the same to us,

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and they may be slightly
different texture,

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or color, or variations, but
we don't think much of it.

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But there's a lot of
engineering and technology

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that is going on in the
material side of the business

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and the construction mixture,
design, and so forth,

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and all although we do not
see, as users of the roadways,

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we do not see those changes,

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there's a constant
evolution of technologies

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and polymer modification,

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use of recycled materials and so forth.

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But one of the things
is, it's very difficult

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in a laboratory environment to evaluate

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what is the real world long term outcome

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of these changes in technology.

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So, and the only way you could do it is,

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by long term evaluation
of field performance.

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So, the idea here was to
see that the materials

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and mixture design technologies,
the specifications that we

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are putting into place and
constantly adjusting based on,

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things that are happening in the industry,

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how are they turning out in the long term,

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five years, 10 years, 15 years

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from after they've been placed?

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- Historically, we've
got multiple databases,

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where we store performance data

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and we store construction data.

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And they're two different databases.

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So in our construction database,

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that's where we capture
everything like mixed designs,

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material quality, as
it's being constructed.

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And that also takes into account
placement of the material.

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There are other databases,
the maintenance database,

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and that's where our maintenance
crew go out over time

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and they're looking at the performance

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of the actual in place roadway.

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And so our goal from this research project

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was to tie our construction
practices and material quality

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and try to tie that into
real-world performance.

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- The object for this research
is essentially, two folds.

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One to identify and good examples

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and also best practices
and that would allow us

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to relay the long term
temporal performance

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with the QC/QA design factors.

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And then secondly and provide
additional recommendations

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in terms of good like
examples and best practices.

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And so the Texas can keep
improving the experiment

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along life experience.

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- We are trying to find out.

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What is the best material combination

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the construction practice that
can give us the more value

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so that we don't have to
have a lot of rehabilitation

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or maintenance activities
down in the future?

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- One of the things, what
we would like to see happen

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is that this should go live

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in the sense should be a real time thing

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or a near real time thing
that is constantly updated

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and is accessible to DOT
on a nearly daily basis.

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So, you know, they could visit this often

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and look at it often.

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The reason for that is our mixture designs

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and specifications and
materials are not static.

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And by bringing life to
this or making this alive

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as a real time and dynamic
thing that sustains itself,

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the DOT will then have
a tool that they can see

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how these things are performing
over time for themselves.

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- [Narrator] For more information,

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and to find the publications
for this project,

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please visit the TxDOT research library

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at the link shown below.