Characterization of pavement surface texture using 3D Laser scanner technique

Characterization of surface texture is very important for pavement management applications, because it can affect road characteristics and vehicle performance in the areas of tire wear, rolling resistance, tire and road friction, noise in vehicles, exterior road noise and discomfort. Many of the pavement texture measurement devices reduce the data to a single attribute such as mean profile depth or hydraulic radius. Although mean profile depth was correlated with friction and noise, it is not the only contributing factor. Texture size, spacing and distribution should also be considered. Therefore, advanced methods that characterize pavement texture in three dimensions are needed. In this paper the authors proposed a 3D laser scanner system for recovering pavement surface macrotexture. To analyze its potentialities, the results obtained on different pavement types were compared with traditional measured texture profiles.