Development of a Portable Circular Texture Meter for Road Texture Depth Measurement

Abstract

This paper presents our work on the development of a portable road texture depth (RTD) meter in response to the need of such a device for the quality control of road maintenance work in New Zealand. The principles of the meter fall under the circular texture meters (CTM) category in which a road surface profile is acquired using a laser displacement sensor mounted on an arm that is rotated around an axis normal to the road surface. The key modules of the meter, including sensors, driving mechanism, and real-time data processing unit, were designed by considering a number of established standards in Australia, the United States, and Europe. The sensor data are processed onboard by a purpose-built embedded system, and the results are available to the operator on a liquid crystal display (LCD) in real time. The meter is capable of sampling more points with more even distribution at a higher speed than the CTMs designed with the methods described in the existing standards. Experimental and field test results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the meter.