A New Procedure for Selecting Chemical Treatments f or Unpaved Roads

摘要

There is increasing interest in the use of chemical treatments to reduce maintenance and gravel replacement on gravel roads. However, choice of the most appropriate chemical treatment is difficult because of the proprietary nature of many of the chemical treatments available. This paper offers a new approach to the selection of an appropriate chemical treatment, which is based on the practitioner understanding the roads that require treatment in terms of traffic, climate, geometry, and materials; understanding the different chemical treatment categories; and understanding the objective for applying a chemical treatment. Based on the information collected, the most appropriate chemical treatment categories for a given situation can be selected from a series of charts and ranked using a simple arithmetical formula. The ability to rank the different treatments available differentiates this procedure from previous procedures documented in the literature. The selection can be refined by evaluating expected performance using prediction charts that are based on material properties determined from the same simple, inexpensive laboratory tests required as input to the selection procedure.