An Investigation on Groove Characteristics Effect on Skid Resistance in Grooved Concrete Pavements

Providing adequate skid resistance is one of the most important issues in the construction of concrete pavements and due to the lack of sufficient friction, smooth concrete pavements can only be used in the places where skid resistance doesn't matter so much; such as parking lots and warehouses. Although there is no comprehensive instruction for texturing on concrete pavements, methods such as grooving, burlap or broom dragging, and exposing the aggregates are used to texture the concrete pavements.In this study, the method of grooving is studied using British pendulum sand patch tests.Therefore, grooves in three different center to center spacings(12.7 mm, 19 mm, 25.4 mm), three different widths (2.5 mm, 3.2 mm, 3.8 mm) and three different directions(transverse, diagonal and longitudinal) were created on concrete specimens.The results of this study indicate that increasing the spacing of the grooves or decreasing the width of them, decreases the depth of the texture.The friction value in every three direction of the grooving decreases by increasing the spacing between the grooves; while increasing the widths of the grooves leads to an increase in the friction values at first; but then the value decreases in the wider grooves.The results show that the transverse grooves lead to the highest skid resistance.