South America
Brazil
The facility, located in UFRGS Campus, Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul State capital), comprises a linear traffic simulator, test sections and a control center. The traffic simulator was designed by UFRGS researchers and built from 1992 to 1994 by DAER/RS personnel. The equipment, 15-m-long, 4.3-m-high and 2.5-m-wide, weighs around 220 kN. Bias ply tires, are mounted on a dual wheel on the loading carriage. The system is arranged with computer control of travel speed and indexing (where the precise path of the tires can be varied as much as ± 0.5 m from centerline for any given number of passes).
Loads ranging from 41 kN (half of Brazilian standard axle load) to 65 kN are hydraulically applied. Tire pressures vary from 0.56 MPa to 0.73 MPa, accordingly. Test wheels travel at 6 km/h over 7 m of pavement. Loads are applied in one direction and normally distributed about a wheel path. By increasing the wheel load and applying this wheel load at the frequency of 260 per hour, the device can simulate the traffic of 105 ESALs in one week.
Topics of past and current projects include:
Use of geotextiles as SAMI in order to delay crack reflection in overlays
A study on flexible pavements performance based on APT and instrumentation
Use of ribbed PVC pipes in pavement drainage
Temperature measurements in asphalt pavements
Strategies to delay crack reflection in asphalt pavements
Surface treatment with polymer modified emulsion as SAM
Asphalt concrete with asphalt rubber binder
Effect of subgrade moisture content in the mechanical behavior of asphalt pavements