The publication titled “Development of Performance Curves for Whitetopping in Minnesota” with Principal Investigator Thomas Burnham, Office of Materials and Road Research-Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is a report on the research project of existing white topping projects in Minnesota.
Whitetoppings, now commonly referred to as bonded concrete overlays on asphalt (BCOA), are growing in popularity as an option for rehabilitating existing asphalt pavements. Recent improvements in the design and construction practices of this pavement type should eventually lead to longer lasting and better performing projects. It was the objective of this study to develop predictive performance models, based on measured performance of existing whitetopping projects in Minnesota, which will eventually be adopted into MnDOT’s pavement management project selection process.
In this project—now considered Phase 1 of a continuing effort—26 whitetopping projects in service throughout Minnesota were examined to determine their historical performance to date. Each of the projects were visited periodically from 2015 to 2018 to gather supplemental performance data. Based on this and other historical data, performance curves were developed to highlight the current trends in Minnesota whitetopping performance in terms of MnDOT pavement index parameters. An analysis of the effect of specific design parameters on performance was also carried out. Finally, two predictive performance models, based on only International Roughness Index (IRI), were developed for undoweled whitetoppings in Minnesota.
To supplement the performance information from the 26 statewide whitetopping projects, the performance of 21 experimental whitetopping sections currently or previously under study at the MnROAD facility were examined. The efforts in this study to characterize the performance of whitetoppings in Minnesota revealed several interesting observations.
To download this publication “Development of Performance Curves for Whitetopping in Minnesota” in PDF form, please go to: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/research/reports/2019/201916.pdf