Prof. Guanghui Xu, an IICTG Executive Committee member, will make an intelligent compaction presentation at the Chinese Construction Equipment conference in Xu Zhou, China, on October 23, 2017. This conference is organized by the Pavement and Compaction Machines subcommittee of the Chinese Association of Construction Equipment Industry.
Prof. Xu’s presentation topic will be “Development of Intelligent Compaction Equipment to Improve Construction Quality “.
The International Intelligent Construction Technologies Group (IICTG) 2017 conference is a huge success! Thanks to all attendees, speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors… and esp. the IICTG 2017 planning committee! The great presentations will be posted in the next few days on a “IICTG member-only” webpage. Find out how to be an IICTG member here!
Here is the group picture! The original picture file is available on the 2017 conference webpage.
An Intelligent Construction Data Management (ICDM) and Veta workshop will be conducted at the IICTG 2017 conference in Minneapolis, MN, on September 26. The workshop is open to all IICTG 2017 registrants. Veta 4.3 will be featured in this workshop with extensive hands-on exercises. The attendees will get a sneak preview of Veta 5.0 at the end of the workshop. Check out the agenda here!
Adequate and uniform compaction of road materials, such as soils, aggregate bases, and asphalt pavement materials, is one of the most important requirements in roadway construction. It is indispensable to strive for high quality of compaction to ensure long-lasting performance. Intelligent Compaction (IC), which uses modern vibratory rollers equipped with an integrated measurement system, an onboard computer reporting system, Global Positioning System (GPS) based mapping, and optional feedback control, helps improve compaction quality control.
“Intelligent Compaction provides crews with continuous compaction control with real-time monitoring,” said Dr. George Chang, Director of Research at The Transtec Group. “IC can help the roller operator better control and achieve the coverage for compaction, which is very difficult to do without guidance.”
Now that construction season is well underway in the United States, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and pavement engineering firm The Transtec Group published two intelligent compaction technical briefs to help construction teams and organizations effectively and efficiently implement IC.
Specification for Intelligent Compaction
The Specification for Intelligent Compaction Technical Brief (FHWA-HIF-17-037) provides a review of national and state IC specifications and recommendations for future enhancements. The FHWA and AASHTO have developed national IC guide specifications and an increasing number of state agencies have also developed their own IC specifications. There is a lot of variance, however, among the contents of state IC specifications.
“Without requiring IC in construction specifications, it is very difficult to make IC widespread,” said Dr. Chang. “The goal of the tech brief is to make complicated technical content more palatable to the public so they can digest the material in a short-form publication.”
Common elements of IC specifications include IC system requirements, a quality control plan, training, field operation requirements, data requirements and submission, and measures and payment. This tech brief provides guidance for state DOTs to customize those elements into their specification.
Color-Coded IC Maps
The Color-Coded IC Maps Technical Brief (FHWA-HIF-17-036) outlines guidelines and recommendations for color-coded maps using IC and paver-mounted thermal profiler (PMTP) data. These maps include items such as roller passes, asphalt surface temperatures, and stiffness values.
IC and PMTP systems have been gaining popularity across the US over the past decade to improve compaction quality and detect temperature segregation behind pavers. On IC and PMTP systems, color-coded maps from their onboard displays are used extensively for monitoring and visual inspection of collected field data and machine operation.
“Visual inspection in the field is one of the very first steps for quality and acceptance of construction, such as meeting required roller passes and coverage and minimum asphalt temperatures” said Dr. Chang. “Using a consistent color palette will make inspections consistent and the process robust.”
Veta Software
IC and PMTP systems gather a tremendous amount of complex geospatial data that poses challenges for data management, analysis, and reporting. These issues have become the main hurdles during implementation. To address the above issues, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, FHWA, and the Transportation Pooled Fund Study, TPF-5(334) have funded development of the Veta software tool for IC and PMTP data viewing and analysis.
Veta is a map-based software tool for viewing and analyzing geospatial data. Currently, Veta can import data from various IC machines and PMTP scanners to perform editing, filtering, spot test correlation, and statistical analysis as a post-processing tool.
One of the salient features of Veta is viewing IC and PMTP data as color-coded maps on top of geographical road or aerial maps to facilitate quantitative interpretation. Key examples are for evaluating consistency of rolling patterns and for identifying cold blobs or streaks of asphalt temperature segregation. Veta allows users to select any specific passes to be viewed, including the last pass or final coverage.
Veta is required in FHWA and AASHTO PP80-17 specifications, and is increasingly adopted by state highway agencies.
The Transtec Group developed Veta with support from the FHWA. Veta is free to download. Currently, the Transportation Pooled Fund (TPF) study, “TPF-5(334) Enhancement to the Intelligent Construction Data Management System (Veta) and Implementation” is leading the effort for enhancing and maintaining Veta to facilitate the national IC/PMTP implementation.
Dr. George K. Chang, The Transtec Group’s Director of Research and a champion for Intelligent Compaction, is the recipient of the 2017 Billiard-Stubstad Award. ASTM International Committee E17 on Vehicle – Pavement Systems presented the award to Dr. Chang in recognition of his contributions to improving the use of inertial profiler data around the world and his substantial contributions to the roughness standards preparation and maintenance activities for committee E17.
“Through his work in the field of the measurement, processing and analysis of pavement profiles, Dr. Chang had become a well-known expert in the field of pavement smoothness,” said Dr. Zoltan Rado, chairman of the E17 committee. “He had used and dedicated his expertise and knowledge in the technical and practical pavement profile measurement area to bring unique administrative contributions and leadership in the standards development work of ASTM E17. His work within the E17 committee had made it possible for the committee to develop and maintain relevant standards that support the industry and user communities as well as state and national regulatory bodies with pavement roughness measurement and analysis standards.”
Dr. Chang has also previously received the 2007 Kummer Lecture Award and the 2010 Meyer-Horne Outstanding Achievement Award from ASTM.
The Billiard-Stubstad Award was established in 2015 in honor of Gary Billiard and Richard Stubstad. The award is intended to recognize individuals who have made exemplary technical, practical, and/or administrative contributions to the pavement engineering community through their standards development efforts.
ASTM Committee E17 on Vehicle-Pavement Systems was formed in 1960. The Committee has 11 technical subcommittees that have jurisdiction of over 73 standards, published in the Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Volume 4.03. These standards have and continue to play a preeminent role in all aspects important to pavement management technologies, vehicle pavement interactions and intelligent transportation systems.
Dr. Chang is a world expert on pavement smoothness and intelligent compaction. He has extensive experiences in pavement engineering consulting, research, training, and pavement software development. He has been actively involved in many projects that relate to pavement surface characteristics–including friction, smoothness, texture, tire-pavement noise–materials structure design, and intelligent construction technologies. Dr. Chang’s unique expertise is in system/model integration, data collection and analysis, and asset management. He has developed many pavement engineering software applications that have been used as standards around the US and the world. He also co-founded the International Intelligent Construction Technologies Group (IICTG) association in 2016.
For more information on ASTM Committee E17 on Vehicle-Pavement Systems or the Billiard-Stubstad Award, please visit www.astm.org.
Intelligent Construction Technologies Group (IICTG) committee members will be presenting at an US Transportation Research Board (TRB) webinar “Application of Intelligent Compaction Technology for Compaction Quality Control of Pavement Layers” on Thursday, July 20, 2017 from US 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM EDT. Please register to reserve your seat NOW!
This webinar will provide an overview of Intelligent Compaction (IC) technology, including how IC can be applied to soils, bases, and asphalt layers. IC deals with the continuous assessment of compacted layer properties using roller vibration parameters and roller speed integrated with GPS to provide comprehensive compaction information. Presenters will discuss the application of IC from different viewpoints, including academia, industry, and a state department of transportation. This webinar was organized by the TRB AFP 70 Standing Committee on Aggregates and TRB AFS 20 Standing Committee on Geotechnical Instrumentation and Modeling.
The webinar presenters are as follows from IICTG and moderated by Prof. Mehran Mazari, California State University at Los Angeles:
The Intelligent Construction IICTG 2017 conference will be held at the Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel, The Depot, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA from September 26 to 28, 2017. The theme for IICTG 2017 is “ICT (Intelligent Construction Technologies) – Past and Future”. The early-bird registration is now extended to July 31, 2017! Please take advantage of that!
Updates regarding the International Intelligent Construction Conference (Sept. 26-28, 2017) IICTG 2017:
1. Please register the IICTG 2017 by June 28 to take advantage of the early bird registration!
2. Please reserve your hotel rooms at the Deport by July 28.
3. A free MnRoad tour is open to all IICTG registrants from 2PM to 4PM on September 25. Please register directly at the MnDOT website!
Intelligent Construction Technologies Group (IICTG) committee members will be presenting at an US Transportation Research Board (TRB) webinar “Application of Intelligent Compaction Technology for Compaction Quality Control of Pavement Layers” on Thursday, July 20, 2017 from US 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM EDT. This webinar will provide an overview of Intelligent Compaction (IC) technology, including how IC can be applied to soils, bases, and asphalt layers. IC deals with the continuous assessment of compacted layer properties using roller vibration parameters and roller speed integrated with GPS to provide comprehensive compaction information. Presenters will discuss the application of IC from different viewpoints, including academia, industry, and a state department of transportation. This webinar was organized by the TRB AFP 70 Standing Committee on Aggregates and TRB AFS 20 Standing Committee on Geotechnical Instrumentation and Modeling.
The webinar presenters are as follows from IICTG and moderated by Mehran Mazari, California State University at Los Angeles:
The 2017 Intelligent Construction Data Management (ICDM) workshop schedule is updated on the IntelligentCompaction.com website!
Please check it out!
Veta is a map-based tool for viewing and analyzing geospatial data. Download Veta for free.
