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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

A First Principles Pavement Thermal Model for Topographically Complex Terrain

Abstract:

A forecasting model chain for pavement temperature in topographically varied terrain was developed and tested on Interstate 90 in Montana. The model chain linked a complex series of models from the continental scale to the microscale. Temporally animated surface temperature forecast maps were produced. Spatial variations were in clear evidence in the thermal signature of ridges compared with valleys and material properties. In order to simplify the information for more efficient utility by highway maintenance decision makers, a subset of the full terrain thermal map was provided to display only the highway temperature as a tricolor map. Comparisons of the pavement temperature calculated and measured at an road weather information system station were quite good when the meteorological forecasts were accurate.

Source(s):

6th International Symposium on Snow Removal and Ice Control Technology; Transportation Research Circular, No. E-C063; Montana State University-Bozeman, Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, and ThermoAnalytics, Inc.

http://trb.org/publications/circulars/ec063.pdf

Date: 2004

Author:

Adams, McKittrick, Gauer, Curran

Keywords:


Forecast/Prediction
Thermal mapping
Decision support

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