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Title:

Effectiveness of Transverse and Longitudinal Pavement Grooving in Wet-Skidding Control

Abstract:

The use of grooving in pavement surface is a common approach to improve wet weather skid resistance and reduce hydroplaning risks. Field measurements have found transverse grooves effective in significantly improving skid resistance and reducing the occurrences of hydroplaning. On the other hand, despite reported wet-weather accident reduction effectiveness of longitudinal grooving, most experimental studies did not record any significant increase in the measured skid resistance of longitudinally grooved pavements. This paper presents an analytical study to evaluate the relative effectiveness of the two types of grooving in terms of their ability to reduce hydroplaning potential, and their respective skid resistance available at the onset of hydroplaning. The groove dimensions examined cover groove widths from 2 to 10 mm, groove depths from 1 to 10 mm, and center-to-center spacing from 5 to 25 mm. It is found that in terms of the ability to raise hydroplaning speeds (i.e. to lower hydroplaning risks) and skid resistance values, transverse grooving consistently produced much better results than longitudinal grooving. The simulation results confirm that for longitudinal grooving with dimensions within the practical ranges, there are only marginal improvements in both hydroplaning speed and skid resistance in the longitudinal directions. However, an analysis by the simulation model indicates that, unlike a smooth plane surface which has the same skid resistance properties in all directions, longitudinally grooved pavements have significantly higher skid resistance as the skidding direction deviates from the true longitudinal direction. The quantitative simulation analysis suggests that this has the effect of enhancing traction to keep skidding vehicles within the roadway and to cut down wet-pavement accidents, a result that has been widely observed in field applications of longitudinal grooving.

Source(s):

86th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, National University of Singapore. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2007

Author:

Ong, Fwa

Keywords:


Crashes
Safety

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