Pavement Engineering

Research activities in the area of pavement materials and engineering include work on:

• Vehicle-Pavement Interaction
• Pavement instrumentation
• Accelerated Pavement Testing
• Nanomaterials for civil engineering
• Numerical modelling of pavement (flexible and rigid) structural responses
• System optimization (static and dynamic back-calculation analyses) with the focus on pavement engineering applications
• Software development for pavement design, evaluation and analysis
• Quality Assurance/Quality Control in road design and construction projects

Recent and ongoing projects undertaken at the CTD include:

Vehicle-Pavement Interaction

Funder: California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)

Collaborators: UP, Caltrans, CSIR

Description: Evaluating the effect of road condition on freight damage and logistics for truck transportation in California.

Post harvest initiative tomato freight damage

Funder: ZZ2, Post Harvest Research Initiative, Tomato Producers Organization

Collaborators: CTD, UKZN, ZZ2

Description: Evaluating the effects of road condition on the damage to agricultural produce (especially tomatoes) during transportation from farm to market.

Road condition monitoring using telematics

Funder: Tracker, THRIP

Collaborators: CTD, Tracker

Description: Developing a system for the onboard evaluation of road condition using cloud computing and vehicle populations.