Real-Time Quality Monitoring and Control of Highway Compaction

• A novel compaction measurement (compaction power per unit volume) has been created.
• Integration of CMV and compaction power leads to more reliable measurement.
• Real-time data processing and informatics synchronization system has been developed.
• Field experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of this method.
• An integrated quality control mode has been devised to facilitate IC technologies.

Compaction quality affects the long-term performance of highways, and thus is important in the highway construction. The current practice for compaction quality control primarily relies on the monitoring of rolling parameters such as rolling passes, speed and vibration of rollers, and lift thickness. Soil samples are randomly collected to evaluate the compactness. This practice is subject to two main limitations. First, the compaction monitoring and measurement are not always comprehensive since limited samples are manually collected. Second, compaction information cannot be disseminated to owners, supervisors, contractors, and operators in timely fashion. In this study, intelligent compaction (IC) technology is leveraged to monitor and control highway compaction quality. A new measure of compaction quality, compaction power per unit volume (E), is created and used with other IC measurement values such as compaction meter value (CMV) to achieve more reliable monitoring and assessment. Field experiments were conducted. The results demonstrated that the integration of CMV and E in the regression model leads to a higher coefficient of determination than that of using only CMV or E. A real-time monitoring system is developed, which not only evaluates the compaction quality of the entire area, but also synchronizes the compaction information among owners, supervisors, contractors, and operators in real-time. As such, this system cultivates an integrated “operator–contractor–supervisor–owner” quality control mechanism, which can improve the current highway compaction practice.