05 – Accelerated Pavement Testing at IFSTTAR, Nantes – France, Mon 14th Apr – Fri 18th Apr, 2018 & Mon 08th Oct – Fri 12th Oct, 2018

Hello word...!!

I hope that you are liking the blog. This is the fifth entry that I am making and just between us, I am getting used to it 😊. However, you have let me do all the “talking” and have not interacted with me which was one of the goals I had when I started blogging. Thus, I encourage you to share your thoughts, ideas, likes, dislikes under the comment tab at the end of the post.

On this occasion, I am writing about the two-work visits I had to the Fatigue Carrousel which is an Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT) facility owned by The French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR). For those who know about what APT is and have hear about what IFSTTAR does then the next lines might be redundant; on the other hand, for those who are curious, specially for those with a pavement engineering orientation, I hope that you will continue searching on your own and perhaps in the near future we could have a discussion.

Figure 1: IFSTTAR Nantes.

John Metcalf under NCHRP: Synthesis of Highway Practices 235 “Application of Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing” in Chapter 1, page 3 defines APT as “the controlled application of a prototype wheel loading, at or above the appropriate legal load limit to a prototype or actual, layered, structural pavement system to determine pavement response and performance under a controlled, accelerated accumulation of damage in a compressed time period” (Metcalf, 1996)” while IFSTTAR is a public research institution created in 2011 as a result from the merger of The French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research (INRETS) and the French Central Laboratory of Roads and Bridges (LCPC). IFSTTAR is composed by five departments: MAST, GERS, COSYS, TS2, and AME which can be seen by clicking the links.

There is some background information regarding the project that I am omitting in order to not make the post too extensive. Having say that, from now on, I will be a little bit more technical in order to describe what was the real purpose of my visit to Nantes. During the first seven months of my research I focused on literature review on piezoelectric materials, sensors, pavement performance, pavement modelling, damage modelling, basically in everything that could be related to link pavement responses to predict its future condition. In parallel, during one meeting with my research supervisor, he told me that our piezoelectric sensors, from now on PZT, were installed on the Fatigue Carrousel and that I should get ready to handle it. Until that point, I have not seen the PZT’s so I was more than ready to travel to Nantes to get the data and to have a brief introduction of the experiment.  Figure below shows the first I saw both PZT Carrousel.   

Figure 2: PZT developed at Michigan State University (MSU), USA.

Figure 3: Fatigue Carrousel during installation.  

APT was carried out between November 2017 and February 2018 where 1.0 million loads were applied. Temperature was measured at different depths (0.0, 50.0, and 100.0 millimetres). Wandering was studied through eleven positions, equally spaced, with a total length of 1.05 meters; position six was at the centre with radius 19.00 meters. Traffic followed a Gaussian distribution where position six bear 22% of it.  Following figures show how data was treated, from importing raw measurements to define an average signal, to then plot maximum values across the transverse position where wandering can be seen.   

Figure 4: Raw voltage after 500,000 load repetitions at radius 19.00 meters.

Figure 5: Average voltage after 500,000 load repetitions at radius 19.00 meters.

Figure 6: Strain responses from TML Gauge at 100 mm depth.

Figure 7: Voltage responses from PZT at 100 mm depth.

Finally, I cannot end this post without my moment of fame, respective selfie, on the Carrousel. In case you wonder, I used MATLAB (90%) and Excel Macros (10%) for processing the data. 

Figure 8: Your blogger with his respective selfie.

Long nights, such as this one, have gotten me closer to the main goal, The PhD.! Stay tuned and see you soon pavement lovers!

Mario Manosalvas Paredes.

04 – Summer Training School, Palermo – Italy, Mon 03rd Sep – Fri 07th Sep, 2018

Hello word...!!

As promised before, I am trying to catch up with you therefore, this time I am writing about the summer school we, SMARTI-Fellows, had in gorgeous Palermo during the first week of September last year. For those who have been reading my blog since the beginning will know that SMARTI is the acronym for “Sustainable Multi-functional Automated Resilient Transport Infrastructure” right? For those who did not know then I kindly invite you to click on the next link where you will find about our projects and our dissemination activities 😊.

Figure 1: SMARTI ETN Summer School.

Well, let’s move on and focus on the theme of the post which relays on the first pillar that we have in SMARTI, Sustainability. Our week was thought, we had eighteen lectures in four-days from 09:00 to 17:30 supposedly, but in reality, we were finishing around 19:00 most of the days; this is to let you know that despite the traveling we are doing it we are working really hard in achieving a better world where theory and novel developments face every day problems towards better infrastructures.

Summer school was divided between Photogrammetry, Monitoring Vibrations, Recycling in Asphalt Pavements, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and Introducing to Sustainability in Education. Fabio Remondino from 3D Optical Metrology (3DOM) walked us through 3D surveying techniques applied to Civil Infrastructures where different equipment’s were mentioned highlighting pros and cons. To be honest, I was a little sceptical at the beginning of the lecture since I could not really think how aerial photography could compare with more traditional methods such as Laser Crack Measurement Systems (LCMS) which I knew from my time at Dynatest Denmark A/S. At the end, we conclude agreeing that in order to choose technology, we need to ask ourselves if the chosen technology fits the requirements of the project and equally important the BUDGET.!  Below it can be seen an image from Fabio’s presentation where a project on energy consumption was explained from data acquisition to data management. Something that called my attention was the price for the aerial measurement. Do you want to take a guess? Tip: for a municipality and even for a big consulting department will not be that much.  

Figure 2: 3D cities with photogrammetry

During our training, we did not only receive theory but had the opportunity to test our new skills in photogrammetry thanks to University of Palermo – UNIPA. Laura Inzerillo led the lecture named “UAV photogrammetry for pavement distress analysis: application and processing” where the work of Ronal Roberts, ESR12, was shown. After the lecture we were ready to collect data unfortunately we could not have the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flying under traffic and pedestrians due to regulations and safety therefore we had to settle with something else.  The following images show the process of collecting data plus the analysis we made. For those interested, we used Agisoft which is a friendly software with lots of tutorials for you to explore. 

Figure 3: UAV data acquisition and differences between

Figure 4: Agisoft software post processing.

Recycling in Asphalt Pavements and Sustainability Assessment was conducted by Gaetano Di Mino from University of Palermo and Davide Lo Presti from University of Nottingham respectively. Both were great presentation which lead to intensive discussion between speakers, fellows and supervisors. In my view, there is still a lot of work that need to be paved before LCA/LCC/LCCA concepts can be truly implemented at project level size. Legislation at European Union (EU) level will be the only way that younger generations will push forward these concepts. Also, monetarizing LCA/LCC/LCCA will help engineers to understand the real concept of sustainability however this could be seen as contradictory. What to do then? 

Figure 5: Gaetano Di Mino (left) and Davide Lo Presti (right).

Finally, we had the pleasure of being lectured by John Harvey from University of California – Davis who was the key-speaker of the week. For those who have the pleasure of work, breath, and feel road engineering will know who John is and his vast contributions to damage models through mechanistic-empirical (M-E) approaches as well as sustainability which was the topic of his talk. 

Figure 6: John Harvey presenting a California case study om Sustainability.

Personally, it was great seeing John again. We first met in Copenhagen back in 2016 but we did not have much time to talk however in Palermo, I had three days to learn from him. The beauty of technology is how connects people and as a proof, John and I sent this photo to a common friend in Chile, Erwin Kohler, who we both remember with great appreciation. Erwin, if you are reading this, thanks for everything.!

 Figure 7: John Harvey (right) and your blogger, Mario.

There are still lot of thing I have not tell you about my journey so, stay tuned and see you soon pavement lovers!

Mario Manosalvas Paredes.

03 – International Society for Asphalt Pavements 2018, Fortaleza – Brazil, Tue 19th Jun – Thu 21 Jun, 2018

Hello word...!!

I have to say that lot of things have happened since my last entry, which was almost a year ago, so I promise that I will write a few posts so you can know where I have been and what I have done within my PhD journey 😊.!

In this entry, I will explain my views and anecdotes on what it was my first international conference as a Marie Curie Research Fellow. The name of the conference was: International Society for Asphalt Pavements (ISAP) which is a volunteer organization of professionals and experts in asphalt engineering whose goal is to share the latest in leading edge asphalt pavement technology worldwide. ISAP conferences occur every four-years having its first appearance in 1962 at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Fifty-six years later, I had the great opportunity to attend the thirteenth ISAP conference held in Fortaleza, Brazil between the 19 and 21 of June 2018. 

Figure 1: ISAP Conference Venue at Hotel Gran Marquise

For any pavement engineer, it was for me at least, see the name of key-speakers such as Andre Molenaar (UT Delft, Netherlands), Hervé Di Benedetto (University of Lyon / ENTPE, France), Kim Jenkins (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa), and many others, was already worth attending the conference and off course, they did not let the attenders down with their presentations. Professor Molenaar walk us through “Pavement Design, where did we come from and where are we going?” which I enjoyed very much. From his lecture, I truly connected when he mentioned that we will not move further if we keep making assumptions, wrong most of the time, on the performance of basic inputs for pavement design which in a way motivated me to talk to him, privately, and explain him the idea behind SmartEcoPave. All in all, Andre showed interest on my topic and shared some of his bibliography plus he put me in contact with two of his former PhD students.

Figure 2: Professor Andre Molenaar on the left and your blogger, Mario.

If I keep talking of all the researchers I met during ISAP this post might turn, in length, as a chapter of my Thesis and right now we do not want that 😉. Nevertheless, I would not like to miss the opportunity to mention some of the people I met and had a talk. Figure 3 shows Richard Kim (North Carolina State University, USA) top left-side, Kim Jenkins (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) top right-side, Luis Guillermo Loria-Salazar (LANAMME-UCR, Costa Rica) bottom left-side, Emmanuel Chailleux (IFSTTAR, France) bottom centre, and Breixo Gomez (University of Nottingham, UK) bottom right-side.  

Figure 3: World-class speakers at ISAP Conference.

As an overall conclusion, I gained knowledge from all the presentations I attended where I also had the chance to dream on how my Piezoelectric Sensors will enter in the non-stopping development’s world of pavements. Also important, had the time to relax and to strength relations with colleagues from Spain and Chile.

Figure 4: Colleagues from Spain and Chile during our last dinner together.

Stay tuned and see you soon pavement lovers!

Mario Manosalvas Paredes.