Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
Office of Operations 21st century operations using 21st century technologies

Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

Modeling Exposure of Roadside Environment to Airborne Salt: Case Study

Abstract:

A field study was performed in order to investigate the relationships between the salt use, the mechanisms affecting the salt emission and dispersion, and the salt exposure in a modeling approach. The salt was collected on gauze filter salt vanes at distances of 2.5 to 100 m from the road, allowing a time resolution of 30-min to 24-h exposure time. The results will be implemented in a winter maintenance management model under development by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. The results showed that the roadside exposure to airborne salt was related strongly to the wind direction. The road conditions of packed snow and thin ice seemed to abate the roadside exposure temporarily by capturing the salt on the road surface. Even at a distance of 100 m from the road, a positive relation of the wind sum and chloride deposition showed on days with strong winds.

Source(s):

6th International Symposium on Snow Removal and Ice Control Technology, Transportation Research Circular, No. E-C063

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

Date: 2004

Author:

Gustafsson, Blomqvist

Keywords:


Environment
Wind
Pavement condition
Winter maintenance

PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.

Office of Operations