What Do Our Roads Withstand?

To maintain roads according to their purpose, it is required to inspect their state with appropriate tools. This subject will be covered by the colloquium on “Methods to Evaluate Road Constructions” next Tuesday, November 24, organized by the KIT Institute of Highway and Railroad Engineering (ISE) headed by Professor Ralf Roos.

It is not sufficient to analyze the surface of a road. Thorough examination must go into depth, i.e. cover the entire construction, the individual layers, and their mutual interaction. This is the only way to reliably evaluate a road construction and estimate its further development.

At the colloquium, representatives of the Federal Highway Research Institute will present the current situation and findings from large test series on a model road. Experts will discuss various methods to test road constructions in Germany and Switzerland. KIT scientists will present possibilities of evaluating in a non-destructive manner the loading capacity and stability of concrete and asphalt roads. The falling weight deflectometer (FWD) applied for this purpose can simulate a load of more than five tons. Five tons are the load generated by a wheel of an average truck axle.

The colloquium on Tuesday, November 24, at the Altes Bauingenieurgebäude (building 10.81) on KIT Campus South will start at 13 hrs and end at about 17 hrs. The interested public is welcome.

Further information and the program can be found at: http://www.ise.uni-karlsruhe.de

 
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation and state institution of Baden-Württemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT focuses on a knowledge triangle that links the tasks of research, teaching, and innovation.