Improvements in Pavement Model to Support Winter Maintenance Decision Making

Date and Time: Tuesday, May 9, 2023: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Keck 100

 

Lead Presenter:  Ben Hershey, Strategic Product Manager
Affiliation:  DTN, LLC
Social Media Handle:  @Ben Hershey

Lead Presenter Biography

Ben Hershey is a Strategic Product Manager with DTN overseeing multiple software applications responsible for providing weather and pavement forecast information to road maintenance decision makers across the world. Mr. Hershey has been involved with the surface transportation industry for 15+ years. He holds a bachelor's and master's degrees in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of North Dakota. 

Co-Authors

Lead Author:
John Mewes, Ph. D.
DTN
john.mewes@dtn.com

Co-Authors:
Ben Hershey
DTN
ben.hershey@dtn.com

Dave Huft
South Dakota Department of Transportation
dave.huft@state.sd.us

Presentation Description 

In 2002, four state transportation departments initiated a Transportation Pooled Fund Study (PFS) to develop an operational maintenance decision support system (MDSS). The PFS MDSS is a computer-based simulation of the factors involved in the snow and ice control practices involved in addressing adverse winter road conditions on state-defined maintenance routes and returning the road surface condition on those routes to their safe driving state. A fundamental enabling technology for the PFS MDSS has been the development of DTN’s Highway Condition and Prediction System (HiCAPS™) pavement condition prediction model, a sophisticated mass and energy balance model that possesses a proven ability to simulate the characteristics of the dynamic layer. It was recognized that the chemical modeling within the HiCAPS pavement model struggled with the relationship between dry salt that was spread in a dry granular form versus salt that had been in solution but left on the road roadway as the water evaporated. Once the solution became complete dry the model would remove the salt from the roadway, within the model, as if it was unbounded salt to the pavement. To address this challenge within the pavement model, model runs were conducted within the model to understand the decay factors between the dry and prewet materials already configured within the model. Successful model changes were made to ensure material, in solution, that dried on the pavement was allowed to decay in a manner observed in operations.

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