Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/325401
Better Roads June 2014 21 bars to pave at roadway pavement temperatures as low as 32 degrees F. However the engineer may restrict paving if ambient tem- peratures are expected to fall below 32 degrees F within 12 hours of paving, says Wade Cooke, quality control manager for Century Asphalt Materials in Houston. With 10 asphalt plants, the company places between 500,000 and 600,000 tons of asphalt per year in the areas around Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Laredo in South Texas markets. Century Asphalt has three of the temperature imaging sys- tems, and two of them are Internet-capable, Cooke says. The company has used the system for some five years. "It's great," Cooke says. "Two of our units are actually tied into the cloud, so that I can go online, on the Internet, and view my paving operations from a remote location. As long as I have a laptop or a desktop computer with Internet access, I can watch them pave. I can monitor speed, and placement temperatures live, in real time. It's convenient too, because I can also take the data at the end of the day, summarize it, and send it to TxDOT on a daily basis. But generally my techni- cians do that at the end of the shift. "We've learned to control our process a little bit better and it basically tells us if we're shipping a material that is incon- sistent in temperature," Cooke says. "So as I'm recording this data, and looking at it daily, I can adjust plant settings, trucking and things of that nature that are affecting temperature. It will help us lower the percentage of moderate and severe readings." Texas specifications encourage contractors to use a material transfer vehicle, and Century has six Roadtec Shuttle Buggies. Cooke says the state encouraged the use of transfer vehicles prior to the advent of the Pave IR system because it remixes the asphalt prior to paving.) "We really didn't think we had an issue with the way we were paving," Cooke says. "Adjustments were not made to the paving as much as in learning how to use the Pave IR equipment and how to adjust it for compliance purposes." Cooke says the company's technicians now are taught to adjust the system to start with the actual mix temperature behind the paver – not the temperature of the asphalt being dumped into the Shuttle Buggy. "So once we learned to start shooting the temperatures with our thermal guns behind the paver, and adjust the Pave IR bar to within 50 degrees of what was reality behind the machine, we were within specifications consistently," Cooke says. "We have very few issues related to 'Severe' ratings, and I'm within 40 percent or less on 'Moderate' readings." v 800-363-1771 • www.highwayequipment.com • © 2014 Highway Equipment Company. All rights reserved. Improved Deicing: • Less material bounce and improved road adhesion. • Less influence from wind. • Accelerated melting process. Improved Efficiencies: • Broadcast on one, two, or three lanes. • Higher application speeds and wider spread width. • Reduced material usage and longer routes. • One-person installation or removal in under 5 minutes. When a winter storm hits, your goal is to eliminate snow and ice on roads as quickly as possible. The Hi-Way ® Xzalt ® makes your streets safer, sooner, by applying a 70:30 mixture of salt/liquid with precision application technology. Text INFO to 205-289-3789 or visit www.betterroads.com/info HighwayContractor_BR0614.indd 21 6/2/14 10:22 AM