condition of the roadway is directly
related to driving conditions and safety.
Researchers at the Integrated
Road Research Facility (IRRF) at the
University of Alberta, along with the
City of Edmonton, have used direct
measurements of road surfaces in
winter conditions to clarify some of
these slippery questions related to
winter road maintenance. Tests were
carried out at the multimillion-dol-lar
IRRF test road, a purpose-built
Figure 1. IRRF test road section used for testing (Edmonton, Alta.) 1
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access road containing more than 300
sensors near the Edmonton Waste
Management Centre in northeast
Edmonton. The 300-m section of the
road used for the tests is shown in
Figure 1.
Measurements were carried out
directly on the road surface using an
RT3® Curve from Halliday Technologies
pulled behind a Ford F150 at the IRRF
test road in Edmonton (Figure 2). The
road was closed to regular traffic at
the time of testing, which took place
over six days in February/March 2013,
under a variety of winter driving con-ditions.
On the testing days, road con-ditions
were dry, dry with ice patches
and snowy (light, moderate and heavy
snow), with temperatures ranging from
-17.5 to -3.5 degrees Celsius. Tests were
carried out at 30, 50 and 60 km/hr to
simulate normal driving speeds; howev-er,
there was no considerable difference
in the results over this range. Plowing
W I N T E R R O A D M A I N T E N A N C E
Images courtesy of Sahar Salimi
(b)
Figure 2. RT3® Curve from Halliday Technologies
and sanding were conducted by City
of Edmonton staff according to their
usual procedures.
Testing was done with ice present
on the road surface, as shown in Figure
3. Measurements were taken under
the conditions listed in Figure 4: ice,
plowed ice and plowed ice after low,
medium and high sanding. While sand-ing
did increase the tire-ice friction, it
is evident that even the high sanding
condition did not result in the road
condition (i.e., tire-ice friction) being
out of the red (unsafe) zone.
A heavy snowstorm on March 21
resulted in 10 to 15 cm of fresh snow
in both lanes. Friction measurements
were carried out in fresh snow, after
sanding directly on the snow, after
plowing and after low, medium and
high sanding on the plowed surface.
The results (Figure 5) show a slightly
lower friction measurement for the
plowed surface after low sanding. This
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