A New Approach for Determining Rubber Enveloping on Pavement and Its Implications for Friction Estimation

The depth to which the pavement texture is enveloped by the tire tread rubber (d) is an important parameter related to contact performance. This study presents a new method (S-BAC), which relies on the ratio between the real contact area and the nominal tire-pavement contact area (S) and the bearing area curve (BAC), to measure the depth on pavements. The tire-pavement contact was simulated by contact between a non-patterned rubber block and pavement specimens. After analyzing the affecting factors, the new method was compared with previous methods by the d values and the application on the relationship between pavement texture parameters and friction. The results reveal that though there is a linear regression between the d obtained with the S-BAC and previous methods, the d values obtained with different methods differ. Applying the S-BAC method can strengthen the relationship between texture parameters and friction more than other methods.