Aggregate Specification to Reduce Dust and Improve Sustainability of Local Rock-Surfaced Roads

Kansas has large rural areas, which are connected by more than 100,000 miles of county roads. Over 53,000 miles of these county roads are surfaced with aggregates. KDOT Specification Section 1112 provides three types of aggregates for surfacing of county secondary roads: crushed stone, sand-gravel, and limestone gravel. The current specifications for crushed stone surfacing include no Plasticity Index (PI) requirement, but plasticity is an important parameter for binding aggregates together for a smooth surface and limiting the amount of fines lost (dust). The Gravel Roads Construction and Maintenance Guide developed by FHWA (2015) has provided good guidelines for construction and maintenance of gravel roads in the nation and requires a PI of 4-12 for crushed rock surfacing. However, this guide was developed based on the local experiences in South Dakota and may not be fully applicable to the practice of rock-surfaced road construction and maintenance in Kansas. In fact, a certain portion of rocksurfaced roads in Kansas have underperformed and even failed, thus requiring repair and frequent maintenance. Some crushed limestone from local quarries is very porous and absorbs water; therefore, it is not durable. To address these problems, there is an urgent need to develop a specification for crushed rock surfacing that will reduce the amount of fines lost (dust), bind the rock surfacing materials together more cohesively to form a crust and shed water, and reduce required maintenance. This proposed study will be partnered with members of the Kansas Association of Counties who have expressed interest in this study.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $79989
• Contract Numbers:

  K-TRAN: KU-24-1

  RE-0879-01

  C2228

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Kansas Department of Transportation

  Eisenhower State Office Building
  700 SW Harrison Street
  Topeka, KS  United States  66603-3754
• Performing Organizations:

  University of Kansas Center for Research, Incorporated

  2291 Irving Hill Drive, Campus West
  Lawrence, KS  United States  66045
• Principal Investigators:

  Han, Jie

  Parsons, Robert

• Start Date: 20230701
• Expected Completion Date: 20250630
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aggregate gradation; Crushed rock; Dust; Fines (Materials); Gravel roads; Specifications; State departments of transportation
• Geographic Terms: Kansas
• Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Materials;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01894621
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Kansas Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: K-TRAN: KU-24-1, RE-0879-01, C2228
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Sep 26 2023 4:04PM