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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Best Practices > Publications > Publication Titles

Title:

A Portable Method to Determine Chloride Concentration on Roadway Pavements

Abstract:

Studies have shown that the ability to measure the salt concentration on roadway surface would bring dramatic advances in the effective use of deicers. Concentration measurement devices currently in use are only for point measurement and are dangerous for field personnel because they require manual on-site measurement. A new portable concentration system developed in this project is mounted on a truck and enables safer and continuous measurement of salt concentration. This study adopts the principle of collecting the tire splash to measure the residual salt concentration on the road surface. A conductivity probe is used to detect salt concentration because it is simple to use and is suitable for rugged field applications. Field test results show that the system was able to continuously detect the salt concentration and distinguish the difference between two areas of different salt concentration under field conditions. We observed delay in the salt concentration detection due to the inflow fluid detained in the snow collection box. However, we developed an analytical method to model this delay and to predict the inflow concentration.

Source(s):

81st Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, University of Connecticut, Prepared for the New England Transportation Consortium

http://docs.trb.org/00939363.pdf

Date: 2002

Author:

Garrick, Nicolaidis, Luo

Keywords:


Anti-icing/deicing chemicals
Maintenance vehicle
Winter maintenance

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