Skid resistance loss of plastic-grooved concrete roadways

An adequate level of skid resistance should be maintained during the entire service life of a roadway to provide safe driving conditions. To plan the appropriate timing of surface restoration, it is necessary to predict the change in skid resistance with time. However, no reliable method to predict the change in skid resistance has been suggested yet. In this study, a method to predict the rate of skid resistance loss for a plastic-grooved concrete roadway is suggested. Accelerated road-surface wearing tests were conducted to investigate the general pattern in the rate of skid resistance loss with the repetition of wheel pass. The relationship between skid resistance and the number of wheel passes is nonlinear and can be expressed linearly using a log–log scale. The rates of skid resistance loss to number of wheel passes of plastic-grooved concrete roadway differ section by section. The difference may be caused by the traffic mixture and climatic conditions of each section. Based on the analysis of the multi-year measurements of skid resistance and the potentially related factors obtained from 13 long-term roadway performance sections, a reliable equation to predict the rate of skid resistance loss for a particular plastic-grooved concrete roadway section is suggested.