Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing highway design and management by introducing advanced methodologies and tools that enhance efficiency, accuracy, safety, and sustainability. Here are several key applications of AI in highway design:
1. Optimizing Route Selection
Geospatial Analysis: AI algorithms analyze geospatial data, including topography, land use, and environmental constraints, to optimize route selection for new highways.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: AI can evaluate multiple routing options considering cost, construction feasibility, environmental impact, and social factors to determine the most beneficial route.
2. Predictive Maintenance
Condition Monitoring: AI systems use data from sensors and IoT devices embedded in highways to monitor conditions in real-time.
Failure Prediction: Machine learning models predict the likelihood of pavement failures, structural damage, and other issues before they occur, enabling proactive maintenance.
Resource Allocation: AI helps prioritize maintenance activities and allocate resources efficiently based on predicted needs.
3. Traffic Flow Optimization
Traffic Simulation: AI-driven traffic simulation models analyze current traffic patterns and predict future traffic flows, helping in the design of highway features like lanes, ramps, and intersections.
Adaptive Traffic Management: AI algorithms optimize traffic signal timings, ramp metering, and variable speed limits to enhance traffic flow and reduce congestion.
4. Safety Enhancements
Accident Prediction: AI models analyze historical accident data, traffic conditions, and environmental factors to predict high-risk areas and times for accidents.
Design for Safety: Using AI insights, designers can incorporate safety features like better signage, improved lighting, and safer road geometry.
Autonomous Vehicle Integration: AI supports the design of highways compatible with autonomous vehicles, ensuring safe interaction between human-driven and autonomous cars.
5. Sustainability and Environmental Impact
Environmental Monitoring: AI systems monitor environmental parameters (e.g., air quality, noise levels) during and after highway construction.
Eco-Friendly Design: AI assists in designing highways that minimize environmental impact by optimizing material use, reducing emissions, and preserving natural habitats.
Sustainable Materials: AI helps identify and evaluate sustainable construction materials and techniques that reduce the carbon footprint of highway projects.
6. Design Automation
Generative Design: AI-driven generative design tools create multiple design alternatives based on specified criteria (e.g., cost, safety, aesthetics), allowing engineers to explore a wide range of options quickly.
BIM Integration: AI enhances Building Information Modeling (BIM) by automating the integration of complex data sets and improving collaboration across different phases of highway design and construction.
7. Project Management
Scheduling and Planning: AI tools optimize construction schedules, manage logistics, and forecast potential delays or cost overruns.
Risk Management: AI identifies and assesses risks in highway projects, helping managers mitigate them effectively.
8. User Experience and Feedback
Crowdsourced Data Analysis: AI analyzes data from social media, mobile apps, and other sources to gather user feedback on highway conditions and design.
Enhanced User Interfaces: AI improves the design of user interfaces in traffic management systems, making them more intuitive and responsive to user needs.
Examples of AI Applications in Highway Design
Waycare: Uses AI to predict traffic incidents and optimize traffic management.
RoadBotics: Employs AI to assess road conditions using smartphone data, helping cities prioritize maintenance.
Automated Pavement Evaluation: AI systems like those developed by startups and research institutions evaluate pavement conditions using computer vision and machine learning.
Benefits of Using AI in Highway Design
Improved Efficiency: Reduces time and effort in design and maintenance processes.
Cost Savings: Optimizes resource allocation, reducing construction and maintenance costs.
Enhanced Safety: Proactively addresses safety concerns, reducing accidents and fatalities.
Better Decision-Making: Provides data-driven insights for more informed decision-making.
Environmental Protection: Supports sustainable practices and minimizes environmental impacts.
Incorporating AI in highway design leads to smarter, safer, and more sustainable infrastructure, meeting the evolving needs of modern transportation systems.
Every pavement, other than those on bridges, self-evidently includes soil. The most basic design requirement of any pavement is that the underlying soil is adequately protected from applied loads. Thus, no pavement engineer can avoid the need to understand soil. The following list features some key facts.
Soils vary from heavy clays, through silts and sands to high-strength rocky
materials.
Soils are not usually consistent along the length of a road or across any pavement
site.
Soils are sensitive to water content to differing degrees.
Water content will vary during the life of a pavement, sometimes over quite short
timescales, in response to weather patterns.
Some soils are highly permeable; some clays are virtually impermeable.
All this leads to one thing – uncertainty. However clever one tries to be in understanding and characterising soils, it is quite impossible to be 100% sure of the properties at a given time or in a given location.
This uncertainty makes life considerably harder. Nevertheless, it is necessary to categorise each soil type encountered in as realistic a way as possible, and there are two fundamental areas in which soil behaviour affects pavement performance. These are :
stiffness under transient (i.e. moving wheel) load
resistance to accumulation of deformation under repeated load, likely to be
related to shear strength.
Granular material
Granular material is unbound material with relatively large particle sizes, and includes natural gravel, crushed rock and granulated industrial by-products such as slag from steel production. Soils are technically granular materials, albeit often with a very small particle size (2 mm or less for clay), but the key difference is that a soil is not, in general, ‘engineered’ in any way.
A granular pavement layer, on the other hand, will be selected and quite possibly deliberately blended to give a particular combination of particle sizes. It can also be mixed with a predetermined amount of water. One would
therefore naturally expect that much of the uncertainty inherent in soil properties is removed in the case of a granular material.
However, it may still be difficult to predict performance accurately, as different material sources, most commonly different rock types, might be expected to exhibit slightly different properties due to their different
responses to crushing or their differing frictional properties.
Nevertheless, a granular material will be a much more controlled and predictable component than the soil.
Even the water-content variation of a granular material will be a little more predictable, in both magnitude and effect, than in the case of soil.
However, the properties of granular material of interest to the pavement engineer are actually more or less the same as those of soil, namely
stiffness under transient load
resistance to accumulation of deformation under repeated load, related to shear
strength.
Hydraulically-bound material
Nowadays, the availability of Portland cement, and substitutes such as fly ash or ground granulated blast-furnace slag, means that it can be economical to use such a binding agent to strengthen a granular material. These binders are known as ‘hydraulic’ binders, as they require the presence of water for the cementing action to take place.
Cement technology is a vast subject in its own right and involves several different chemical reactions, the most important of which are the conversion of tricalcium silicate (c. 50% of Portland cement) and dicalcium silicate (c. 25%) into hydrates (forming strong solids) by reaction with water, also generating calcium hydroxide and heat. The
first reaction is rapid; the second is slower. The reader should refer to specialist literature for details.
Hydraulically-bound materials, including so-called pavement-quality concrete (hereafter referred to as PQC) at the upper end of the strength spectrum, introduce a quite different type of behaviour and totally different design requirements. They possess a key property that is lacking in soils and granular materials, namely the ability to withstand tension.
Individual particles are rigidly bonded together by the binding agent, and a definite tensile force is required to break that bond. In the case of a strong concrete, all the large particles are well bonded into a continuous matrix of fine aggregate and cement paste, and the whole material is solid and rigid. It has a stiffness that is still partly
governed by the contacts between the large particles, but which is also heavily dependent on the qualities of the surrounding cementitious matrix.
In the case of a weaker hydraulically-bound material, the binding effect may be less complete and there may be many particle contacts that remain unbound, giving a certain freedom of movement
within the material and a reduced stiffness and strength.
Nevertheless, even a weak hydraulically-bound material will remain as a solid, with negligible permanent deformation
until the bonds are fractured, that is until the tensile strength is overcome. The key properties for the pavement engineer are, therefore
stiffness
tensile strength.
One further property that could arguably be added is fatigue resistance, that is, the resistance of the material to failure under repeated load at a stress level less than its failure strength. However, the relationship with tensile strength is so close that it is hardly a separate property.
It would also have been possible to add curing rate (the rate of strength gain), as this certainly affects the construction process and economics significantly, and thermal expansion coefficient, as this property strongly influences the tendency of a hydraulically-bound material to crack under day–night temperature variation, requiring the introduction of movement joints in concrete pavements
Bitumen-bound material
This is a material almost unique to pavement engineering, amaterial whose beneficial properties were discovered almost by accident, but a material which is now very much at the centre of pavement technology. There are countless stories as to when bituminous products were first used on roads, such as the accidental spillage of tar outside Derby iron works in 1901.
Although mastics including natural asphalt had been used on footways since the 1830s, they were not stable enough for roads, and it was not until around 1900–1901 that the first usages of tar-bound stone occurred at approximately similar dates in the USA and Europe. Lay (1990) gives further information.
While proportions differ around the world, typically some 90% of paved highways have a bitumen-bound surface layer; whatever the make-up beneath the surface, bitumen and bitumen-bound materials (referred to hereafter as asphalts) currently play a major role.
And asphalt is quite different from concrete or any hydraulically-bound material. Bitumen is a binding agent, like Portland cement and the other hydraulic binders, but it has very different properties. Whereas hydraulic binders create a rigid material that cannot deform appreciably unless it first cracks, bitumen remains a viscous liquid at
normal in-service temperatures. It therefore has the ability to ‘flow’.
An ability to flow may seem a rather undesirable quality in a material that is aiming to bind rock particles together, and it does indeed lead to the possibility that an asphalt can deform – hence the phenomenon known as ‘rutting’ or ‘tracking’. However, it also overcomes some of the difficulties encountered with rigid hydraulically-bound materials.
For a start, the expansion and contraction with day–night temperature variation is accommodated simply by a small viscous strain within an asphalt, meaning that no movement joints are required, and that thermally-induced cracking will only occur under the most extreme temperature conditions (continental winters, deserts).
Asphalts are also able to accommodate any moderate movement within the foundation, for example, minor differential settlement in an embankment, movement that might lead to the fracture of a rigid concrete slab. Furthermore, the tendency of asphalt to flow can be controlled by proper mixture design such that rutting is avoided.
However, despite the flexible nature of asphalt, it can still crack. It is impossible to define a tensile strength, as this will vary with temperature and rate of loading; the relevant parameter is the ‘fatigue characteristic’, defining resistance to cracking under repeated load. The key properties required for design are therefore:
stiffness
resistance to deformation under repeated load
fatigue characteristic.
Other materials
The fourmaterial types introduced so far represent the basic building blocks available to the pavement engineer. However, it is worth referring here to a couple of materials that do not fit so easily into any of the four categories.The first is block paving. Blocks are often made of concrete and so could have been introduced under ‘hydraulically-bound materials’.
On the other hand, they can be cut fromnatural stone or may comprise fired clay bricks.Moreover, the discontinuous nature of block paving means that the properties of the parent material are less important than the effects of the discontinuities. The blocks themselves may have the properties of concrete, for example, a stiffness modulus of some 40 GPa, but the effective layer modulus once the discontinuities are taken into account may be as little as 500MPa.
The second special case is a hybrid material, known in the UK as grouted macadam and in the USA as resin-modified pavement; it is also sometimes known as ‘semi-flexible’ material. This too does not fit neatly into any of the previous categories, as it combines an asphalt skeleton with a cementitious grout, filling the voids in the asphalt mixture.
It therefore utilises both bituminous and hydraulic binders. Having a two-stage production process the material tends to be expensive, and is used in particular heavyduty applications such as bus lanes and industrial pavements. As will be demonstrated later, it actually resembles an asphalt much more than a concrete, but it is nevertheless
distinct.
Block paving and grouted macadam are bulk-use materials at the expensive end of the range.
There are also specialist products that are only used in small quantities to strengthen, or in some way improve, a pavement layer.Here one could include steel reinforcement of concrete.
There are also reinforcing products designed for asphalt; some are steel, others polymeric or made of glass fibre.Asimilar range of products is available for the reinforcement of granular materials. Generically, these products are known as geogrids and their use is widespread in some areas, for example, as a means of stabilising roads over very soft ground.
Geotextiles comprise a closely related range of products, produced in various ways and forming continuous layers separating two different pavement materials (commonly the soil and a granular layer). These too can have a reinforcing function, but their most common use is simply as a separator, ensuring that fine soil particles do not migrate up into the pavement and that stones from a granular layer do not lose themselves in the soil.
The entire spectrum of geogrids and geotextiles is known under the collective name of geosynthetics and, although geosynthetics are specialist products, it is the responsibility of the pavement engineer to understand how (and whether) they work in particular applications rather than relying solely on the, sometimes not unbiased, opinion of a supplier.
Road designs vary greatly from country to country, but are generally calculated based on the performance metrics that need to be achieved. A super-highway will have a much larger profile of design than a rural road. However, all road profiles generally have three basic layers: a drainage layer, base and wear-course.
Just like a chain, every road is only as strong as its weakest link. Herein lies the problem. When a wear-course like asphalt begins to fail, evident by cracking and potholes, generally it is due to failures at the base or sub-base. Why then during construction would these critical layers only be compacted with water and therefore left “unstabilized,” and susceptible to water and vibratory erosion?
When integrating LANDLOCK into one (or all) of these three layers/sections of the road, it allows builders to gain several critical advantages that significantly reduce the traditional waste associated with modern road construction.
Advantages for Primary/Urban Roads & Highways
Profile Reduction
Based on extensive lab and field testing, a LANDLOCK® treated base will be 2-20 times stronger than an unstabilized base. This means that engineers can significantly reduce the profile of design of the road and still achieve the required performance metrics. A smaller profile of design means less material. At the same time, builders will see a reduction in material spreading and transportation costs, while simultaneously increasing production rates. The entire construction process is more efficient and less wasteful – Smarter Infrastructure.
Extended Life Cycle
As mentioned above, traditional wear-courses like asphalt are only as good as their base. It is only logical then that a wear-course laid on a rock-hard, erosion free LANDLOCK® treated base will last much longer than when laid on an unstabilized base. A longer life means less money being wasted on costly maintenance work, leaving more money to spend in other areas.
Advantages for Feeder/Farm-to-Market Roads
Paving/Stabilizing Dirt and Gravel Roads
Across the world, even in developed countries, there are millions of miles of unpaved roads that are a constant source of fugitive dust and waste given their need for constant maintenance. Because unpaved roads have no protection from rainfall, water erosion will turn a newly graded, rural road into a muddy mess, that once dried out, is then covered with potholes and washboarding. It is a vicious cycle that, previously, was impossible to win.
A paver (paver finisher, asphalt finisher, paving machine) is a piece of construction equipment used to lay asphalt on roads, bridges, parking lots and other such places. It lays the asphalt flat and provides minor compaction before it is compacted by a roller.
All machines consist of two basic units; the tractor unit and the screed unit.
1. Tractor Unit
1.1 General:
The tractor unit provides moving power for the paver wheels or tracks and for all powered machinery on the paver. The tractor unit includes the receiving hopper, feed conveyor, flow control gates, distributing augers (or spreading screws), power plant (engine), transmissions, dual controls, operator’s seat, and wheels or tracks.
When in operation, the tractor unit power plant (engine) propels the paver, pulls the screed (leveling) unit, and provides power to the other components through transmissions. Hot mix is deposited in the hopper from where it is carried by the feed conveyor through the flow control gates to the distributing augers (spreading screws).
The augers distribute the mix evenly across the full width of the paver for uniform placement onto the roadway surface. These operations are controlled by the paver operator by means of dual controls within easy reach of the operator’s seat. Refer to Figure 1. Many pavers have hydrostatic drive systems that permit an unlimited number of speeds within the operating range and once set, will automatically maintain the desired speed.
1.2 Pneumatic Tires and Crawler Tracks:
The tractor unit may be equipped with either rubber tires or steel tracks. If the paver is equipped with pneumatic tires, tire condition and air pressure must be checked. It is particularly important for the pressure to be the same in tires on both sides of the paver.
If the paver moves on tracks (crawlers), the tracks should be checked to be certain they are snug but not tight, and the drive sprockets should be checked for excessive wear. Low tire pressure or loose crawlers can cause unnecessary movement of the paver, which when transmitted to the screed unit results in an uneven pavement surface. There should be no build-up of material on tires or on tracks. Excessively worn parts should be replaced.
1.3 Governor :
The governor on the engine must be checked to be sure there is no periodic surge in the engine RPM. If it is not working properly, there can be a lag in power when the engine is loaded. Such a lag causes temporary failure of the vibrators or tamping bars in the screed unit, resulting in a stretch of pavement that is less dense or contains slightly less material than the immediately adjacent area. After rolling, such an area shows up as a transverse ripple in the pavement. A power lag can also interfere with the smooth and consistent operation of electronic screed controls.
1.4 Hopper, Flow Gates and Augers :
The hopper, the slats on the feed conveyor, the glow gates, and the augers should be checked for excessive wear and observed to be certain they are operating properly. Necessary adjustments should be made by the contractor to ensure these components are functioning as designed and are able to deliver a smooth flow of mixture from the hopper to the roadway.
All of the machines have adjustable flow control gates, which regulate the amount of the paving mixture, which is carried on the slat feeders from the receiving hopper to the distributing augers. The slat feeders should be operating most of the time (80% to 90%) and the flow control gates should be set to keep the augers at least two-thirds covered with material. It is very important that the level of the material in front of the screed be kept fairly constant.
If the level of material is allowed to intermittently rise and fall and thereby flood or starve the screed, a rough mat, segregation of the material, and imperfections in the surface will result. Some pavers are equipped with automatic controls to maintain a uniform depth of material ahead of the screed; the adjustment of the sensing device and the flow gates should be coordinated so the slat feeders operate most of the time as stated above.
Quarter-line cracking or raveling of the mat is believed to be caused by worn interior augers, paddles, and baffles that tend to starve the screed near the center of the paver. Such equipment should be regularly inspected, and if excessively worn, should be replaced or rebuilt to original dimensions.
Feeders, gates, and augers should be checked for excessive wear. They should be observed while operating without mixture to be assured they are functioning properly and in synchronism with each other.
2. Screed Unit
2.1 General:
The screed unit strikes off the mix, controls thickness, imparts smoothness, and provides initial compaction of the mixture. A typical screed unit is comprised of the following: screed tow arms, screed plate, hearing unit, tamping bars or vibratory attachments, and controls.
The screed unit is towed by long arms attached to pivot points located forward on the tractor unit, permitting the screed to operate on a floating principle which tends to compensate or dampen irregularities in the base that affect the tractor unit. Mat thickness is adjusted manually by tilting the screed up or down around a pivot pin just above the screed.
When operating an automatic grade control the screed compensates for irregularities in the base by adjusting the screed arm at or near the pivot point of the screed arms. As the manual thickness controls are adjusted, the screed seeks a new level, up or down, as the machine moves forward, but the total effect of the change may not be realized until the machine has moved several feet. Consequently, the machine should be allowed to move 50 feet before any further adjustments are made.
The sensitivity of the controls differs between makes of machines and consequently the maximum amount of adjustment that should be made at any time differs with the machine. The amount of change in thickness produced by any given adjustment on the controls depends on the mixture being placed, so it is impossible to state that a particular adjustment will change the mat thickness by a definite amount.
Refer to Figure 1. Screeds with tamping bars or vibratory mechanisms are designed to strike off and then compact the mixture slightly as it is placed. There are two purposes to this screed action. It achieves maximum leveling of the mat surface, and it ensures minimum distortion of the mat surface, and it ensures that minimum distortion of the mat surface will occur with subsequent rolling. Because the different screed compaction systems function differently, they are discussed separately below.
2.2 Tamping Bar Type:
Tamping bar type screed compactors compact the mix, strike off the excess thickness, and tuck the material under the screed plate for leveling. The tamper bar has two faces; a beveled face on the front that compacts the material as the screed is pulled forward and a horizontal face that imparts some compaction. The horizontal face primarily strikes off excess material so the screed can ride smoothly over the mat being laid.
The adjustment that limits the range of downward travel of the tamping bar is the single most important adjustment affecting the appearance of the finished mat. At the bottom of its stroke, the horizontal face should extend 0.016″ – about the thickness of a fingernail – below the level of the screed plate. If the bar extends down too far, mix builds up on the screed face that tends to scuff the surface of the mix being placed.
In addition, the tamping bar will lift the screed lightly on each downward stroke, often causing a rippling of the mat surface. If the horizontal face of the tamping bar is adjusted too high (either by poor adjustment or due to wear of the bottom of the horizontal face), the bar does not strike off excess mix from the mat. Consequently, the screed plate begins to strike off the material, which results in surface pitting of the mix being placed as the leading edge of the screed plate drags the larger rocks forward.
Therefore, the tamper bar should always be checked before operating the paver. If necessary, the contractor should adjust it, and before it approaches knife-edge thinness it should be replaced. Refer to Figure 2. Clearance between the rear of the tamper bar and the leading edge of the screed frequently is overlooked.
Properly adjusted, there should be just enough clearance to allow free movement of the tampers – approximately 0.010″ to 0.020″. Refer to Figure 2. Screed plates will wear out first about 4″ to 6″ in from the trailing edge. The first indications will be either an indentation or an actual ripple in the surface of the screed plate. These should be checked periodically and replaced as needed.
2.3 Vibratory Type:
he operation of vibratory screeds is similar to that of tamping screeds, except that the compactive force is generated not by a tamping bar, but by either electric vibrators, rotating shafts with eccentric weights, or hydraulic motors that vibrate the screed plate.
On some pavers, both the frequency (number of vibrations per minute) and the amplitude (range of motion) of the vibrators can be adjusted. On others, the frequency remains constant and only the amplitude can be adjusted. Frequency and amplitude are set in accord with the type of pavers, speed of the paver, thickness of the mat, and the characteristics of the mixture. Once set, frequency and amplitude do not normally need adjustment until mat thickness or mixture change.
Some pavers have a “pre-strike-off unit” or a curved strike-off blade at the leading edge of the screed for use with “critical” material. It is attached to and receives vibration from the screed plate itself. It meters the amount of material going under the screed plate and can be adjusted vertically. Some other pavers have a round-nose strike-off bolted directly to the screed frames and welded to the screed plate so no adjustment can be made.
In these, the screed shield assembly is the only part of the screed that is adjustable. It can be moved up for normal material flow or down for dense mixes and thin lifts. As with tamping screeds, the screed plates will begin to wear first about 4″ to 6″ in from the trailing edge. Those with excessive wear should be replaced.
2.4 Oscillating Type:
Some pavers are equipped with both an oscillating screed and a vibrating compactor. The oscillating screed, beveled for initial compaction, operates at 600 strokes per minute, with 1/4″ transverse strokes, striking off the material for the desired depth. The vibrating compactor, mounted to the rear of the oscillating screed, supports the screed unit, imparts additional compaction, and irons out the surface of the mat.
The most critical adjustment is positioning the oscillating screed relative to the vibrating compactor. The bottom rear edges of the oscillating screed and the bottom rear edges of the vibrating compactor must be parallel. The compactor should be sloped or tilted so that a projection of the plane of the bottom will intersect at a point 0.4″ above the bottom of the screed. Minor adjustments in this differential may be necessary to obtain a uniform appearance in the mat. Refer to Figure 3.
2.5 Crown Adjustment :
All machines have provision for adjustment of crown in the screed. Usually it is desirable to provide a slight amount of crown in the screed to avoid the appearance of the mat being low in the center of the lanes.
The usual crown allowed per lane on rural-type pavements is 0.10″; however, urban cross sections may require special adjustment. Also, the amount of crown at the front edge of the screed is generally increased somewhat from that required at the back, with at least a 0.08″ increase usually being recommended.
The amount of this differential may be varied with the particular material being used, and is sometimes helpful in reducing and eliminating non-uniformity of the surface texture across the paved width. Too much crown in the leading edge of the screed will crease an open texture along the edges. Too little crown in the leading edge will create an open texture down the center of the mat.
2.6 Automatic Screed Controls:
The paver shall be equipped with an approved automatic control system, which controls longitudinal grade and transfer slope, except when paving miscellaneous areas or when the engineer finds the use of this system impractical.
The specifications require the use of such longitudinal control, unless the engineer permits its omission on the final surface course. Exceptional conditions could arise, however, where omission of the longitudinal grade control in the interest of a smoother ride can be permitted.
The engineer may discontinue use of the automatic equipment and require manual control when it appears better results may be obtained thereby. Such might be the case on work which includes sections with an urban-type cross section with non-uniform crown, or on intersections, interchanges, or similar areas.
Pavers not equipped with automatic controls may be used when the engineer determines the use of such controls is impracticable, as on small specialized projects, jobs entirely urban with variable crown, or jobs having frequent intersections or other features which are not adaptable to such use.
When the automatic grade control fails, the paver can be operated under manual control for only the remainder of the working day on which the automatic control system broke down. The automatic control systems use electronic sensors to control grade and to control transverse slope. Refer to Figure 3. The sensor gets its information from a sensing device riding on a fixed stringline, a mobile stringline, or a traveling straightedge.
The specific type of sensing device used on the initial lane of a layer or course is subject to the engineer’s approval. For paving subsequent lanes of the course or layer, the paver may use a shoe or straightedge riding on the adjacent lane as a sensor.
There are several grade sensor types and transverse slope sensor types. Some systems make screed adjustments by raising or lowering the pull arm pivot points with hydraulic rams activated through solenoids. Some make adjustments by varying the angle of hinged pull arms through electrically driven screws. Others adjust the thickness control screws with electric servomotors.
In operation, once the screed is set for the desired depth of spread, the automatic system takes over to produce a smooth mat. Transverse slope is controlled by a pendulum that acts through switches to activate the appropriate piston. The sensitivity of the controls is critical to the smoothness of the mat. The sensors should be properly nulled as provided in the manufacturer’s instructions.
2.7 Heaters :
The screed assembly is equipped with heaters to prevent the mix from sticking to the screed plate. They are used to heat the screed plate at the start of paving operations or on a cool, windy day. Heaters should never be used to heat mix being delivered to the paver. Heaters should be observed while lit to assure they produce sufficient heat.
2.8 Screed Extensions:
Extensions should be attached properly to the main section of the screed. They should be, as their name implies, an extension of the plane of the tamper bar and the screed section if uniform compaction behind the paver is to be attained.
Pavers with a vibratory main screed and vibratory side extensions should be checked by the inspector for satisfactory frequency. Use of a vibrating reed tachometer held against the main screed unit and each extension will give quick, reliable, and measurable results to be compared against manufacturer’s authentic data.
The accuracy of variable vibratory frequency control supplied on some models could also be checked with the tachometer.
2.9 Maintenance :
An important item of paver operation, often overlooked, is proper clean up of the paver at the end of the working day. While the machine is still warm from its day’s operations, the hopper, feeder augers, tamper bars, and screed plates should all be cleaned and sprayed with a light oil to assure smooth start-up the next day of use.
