Performance Monitoring of Preservation Treatments in Honolulu
Dr. Ricardo Archilla received funding from the University Transportation Center for Pavement Preservation (about $280,000, from 2013 to 2018) to monitor the performance of different preservation treatments in Honolulu, Hawaii (Waipahu and Pearl City). Preservation treatments include crack sealing by itself or in combination to other preservation treatments available in Honolulu such as fog seal, slurry seal, and asphalt seal coat (in Hawaii, the term seal coat is used for the application of an asphalt emulsion with a certain amount of sand).
In addition, Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) temperatures with depth have been monitored for a year to validate whether temperature profiles can lead to Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) moduli increasing with depth; a situation that is believed to result in high tensile strains near the surface of the pavement leading to top-down fatigue cracking.
Development of a Hot Mix Asphalt Fatigue Test Configuration Applicable to Thin Lift Overlays
Dr. Ricardo Archilla received additional funding from the University Transportation Center for Pavement Preservation (about $110,000, from 2016 to 2018) to develop a fatigue test for Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) specimens that is applicable to Thin Lift Overlays (TLO) and that overcomes the limitation when testing with standard cylindrical that brake outside the region where strains are measured because of non-uniform strain distributions due to end effects, uneven air void distributions and load eccentricity.
Concrete Pavement Runway Monitoring for Kahului Airport
Dr. Amarjit Singh secured a very long duration (2012-2021) project from the Airports Division of the Hawaii Department of Transportation (about $500,000) to install sensors in airport pavements to measure stress. The purpose of this is to identify pavement distress before visible on the surface, so that preventive maintenance can be undertaken.