 Most of the roadway system in this country is already built, but keeping those roads in good condition is an ongoing job. It demands vigilant monitoring and consumes millions of dollars from strapped budgets. Sharp researchers set out to develop procedures and products that would help. Help assess a road's condition, help determine when and where repair work is needed, and help control traffic safely in a work zone. Highway work zones are danger zones. Drivers must often negotiate confusing travel lanes. Workers do their job sometimes within inches of high speed trucks and cars. An average of 60 workers are killed in connection with work zone traffic accidents each year. In addition, many motorists lose their lives in work zones. Using Sharp's new tools and procedures, highway agencies and contractors can save money and lives. Highway work zones can be made safer. In this program, we'll look at the results of Sharp's pavement maintenance and work zone safety research. Several of Sharp's pavement maintenance research projects deserve special attention. They have identified or produced cost-effective materials, methods, engineering guidelines, and equipment. We'll focus on preventive maintenance operations, longer-lasting materials, innovative equipment, and work zone safety devices. We spend millions of dollars on pavement maintenance, but is it money well spent? Sharp has a new manual that will help you evaluate the quality of preventive maintenance treatments. With it, you can rate different elements of the treatments to help you predict how long repair will last. At more than 100 test sites in the U.S. and Canada, Sharp and the FHWA are assessing the effectiveness of six specific preventive maintenance treatments. Researchers have applied chip seals, thin overlays, slurry seals, crack and joint sealing, and under-sealing. They'll monitor these sites for many years. In five to ten years, they'll publish their findings. The goal is to determine the most cost-efficient time to apply maintenance treatments and the best treatment to apply for any given set of conditions. Early results are available now in a manual called Development of a Procedure to Rate the Application of Pavement Maintenance Treatments. Here's how it works. Your maintenance inspector uses a data collection sheet prepared with this specific type of treatment in mind. It rates the different elements as the work is being done, such as equipment, materials, and environmental and pavement conditions. Later, the inspector applies the information to a series of rating trees. The result is a quantitative rating of how well the treatment was applied and a prediction of how long the pavement treatment will last. These objective, concise ratings will significantly improve your quality control. Another important result of this research is a set of clear, easy-to-use specifications for preventive maintenance treatments for each climatic region. They cover materials, equipment and construction, as well as bidding, contracting, legal and pavement procedures. They represent a mammoth effort regionally and nationally. Experts evaluated specifications from the Asphalt Institute, the International Slurry Seal Association, ASTM and other organizations. After modifying these specifications to suit your agency, you can use them to write better bid documents and track a contractor's work with confidence. Until now, to verify a void in concrete pavements, workers had to dig up a section of the pavement. Then, of course, they had to repair the section. Now, sharp researchers have developed a better way. The test procedure is called detection of voids under rigid pavement. If deflection testing indicates a possible void, this simple test can confirm it before you dig up the pavement. First, you drill a small hole and pour in an epoxy mixture with a red dye in it. When the epoxy is hardened, you take a 4-inch core sample. The red epoxy will indicate if there is a void and show its thickness. By pinpointing where under-sealing is needed, this new procedure can save you time and money. This research points out the true cost of deferred preventive maintenance. Rhodes improperly maintained will not last as long as Rhodes properly maintained. Sharp research confirms the benefits of specific treatments applied at a specific time using specific procedures. Sharp researchers have discovered dramatically better ways to fix cracks, joints and potholes. They have produced four new manuals of practice. The manuals explain how to properly place various improved and innovative materials, and they list the equipment you'll need. They also describe lessons learned during construction of sharp test sites. By following the procedures outlined in the manuals, you'll save valuable crew time, produce more durable pavement surfaces, minimize traffic disruption, and reduce worker exposure to traffic hazards. Researchers studied pothole repair and crack sealing and filling in asphalt pavements, and spa repair and joint resealing for Portland Cement concrete pavements. They used a total of 22 test sites in four climatic zones. Wet freeze, dry freeze, wet non-freeze, and dry non-freeze. At each location, they tried many kinds of materials, both new and old, under varying conditions. As even better materials become available, these manuals will continue to be useful to engineers selecting the best product for each job. The Federal Highway Administration will monitor these sites. Then in 1998, they'll analyze and publish the results. That final manual will summarize the products and procedures that performed best in each of the four climatic regions under varying conditions. Sharp innovation doesn't stop at materials and techniques. Researchers are looking at a variety of new devices as well. They will save time, money, and dramatically increase safety in highway work zones. These are the early tests of a pothole patching machine. It uses well-established commercial robotics technology, but puts them all together for the first time. After using a laser video system to define the hole, it routes the hole with a vertical mill pavement cutter. Then it vacuums the hole and uses heat to dry and soften the edges. Finally, it fills and compacts it with quality patching material injected at sufficient velocity so mechanical compaction is not necessary. This device will mean consistent, high quality repairs at a lower cost per patch. Perhaps most important, it will improve safety by getting workers off the road. Watch for more information on this device as it becomes available. Just as ambitious a project involves a robotic pavement crack sealer, it will allow you to fill and seal pavement cracks in less time and with less cost. Two operators ride safely in the vehicle and do what a crew of six usually does on the road. The highly automated vehicle maps, routes, and seals transverse and longitudinal cracks while moving at one to two miles per hour. A video camera and depth sensor work together, identifying, mapping, and routing the cracks. Then a hot-air lance cleans and dries the cracks before the machine seals them. Now maintenance crews can quickly and easily determine where and when repairs are needed without tearing up the road. Ground penetrating radar allows you to monitor road segments on a network-wide basis while traveling in about 30 miles per hour. It detects distress early, so you will know when repairs or remedial work need to be done and it works on both asphalt and concrete pavements. Its artificial intelligence software is relatively easy to use. After a short training period, your own maintenance technicians will be surveying your roads, detecting such problems as moisture in asphalt layers and base failures, finding voids, and searching out overlay delaminations. Once you've discovered a problem area, an even more sensitive device can tell you about the extent of the problem, so you can select the best repair method. It's called a seismic pavement analyzer. A stop-and-go device, it employs seismic technologies to analyze specific pavement sections and provide much more detailed data on their condition. In the past, specially trained personnel had to review seismic and radar findings and decipher the meaning of the squiggly lines for maintenance supervisors. Sharp researchers dramatically improved on this process by developing a program that maintenance technicians can use directly. It converts the squiggly lines to bar graphs and easy-to-read data, showing layer thickness, elastic properties of the pavement layers, and voids or delamination. Once again, maintenance technicians need only a short period of training to learn how to use this equipment. New safety devices will mean safer working and driving conditions in work zones. Eleven devices have passed rigorous evaluation and testing and are now available. Here are a few. The all-terrain sign stand solves the problem of signs that fall over or can't be set up because of uneven terrain. Taking just a few minutes to erect, it will adjust to variable slopes and allow the sign to remain vertical. The sign is flexible and can be rolled up for transport. In addition, the feet can be staked down to prevent tipping on a steep slope or in high winds. The swivel attachment that connects the sign to the legs permits adjustment to almost any terrain. The portable rumble strip warns motorists they are approaching a work zone. It can make flagger-controlled work zones safer. This early prototype is made of durable, flexible material. It's 10 feet long, weighs approximately 60 pounds, and can be folded for easy movement and installation. It's designed to be placed at various locations upstream of a flagger where it will give motorists a noticeable jolt and an audible rumble alerting them to pay attention to changing traffic conditions. Flaggers will be happy to use the flashing stop-slow paddle. It is highly visible and tests show it gets the driver's attention. The device has two high-intensity quartz halogen lights powered by rechargeable batteries in the handle. A small switch on the side of the handle causes the lights to flash. The infrared intrusion alarm will warn workers of errant vehicles. There are two units. A lightweight, easy-to-set-up detector is placed 500 feet from the work site at the beginning of the work zone. It bounces a beam off a reflective strip on a cone. Then a receiver and siren are set up near the workers. If a vehicle enters the work zone and breaks the beam, the 120-decibel siren sounds. The infrared beam works in both rain or shy. It gives workers at least four seconds to clear the area. Crash cushions are very effective safety devices. Until now, however, they were suited only for permanent installations. The portable crash cushion consists of 13 sand barrels mounted on a tilt bed. The cushion is easily deployed and retrieved in an area upstream from workers by just one operator. The device has several uses, such as closing off one lane of traffic or protecting motorists from the blunt end of a temporary concrete barrier. All of these new devices concentrate on getting the attention of unsuspecting drivers and providing added safety for workers and motorists. In addition, they give more positive guidance to drivers. The remotely driven vehicle protects work crews as well as the driver of the vehicle. The RDV, as it's called, is a dump truck modified to operate as a driverless shadow vehicle. When not used as an RDV, the truck may be driven as any other maintenance vehicle. As an RDV, it travels at speeds up to five miles per hour and is controlled by a battery-powered transmitter from up to 1,200 feet away. It provides positive protection to workers in a work zone and at the same time does not expose a driver to the danger of rear-end collisions. The control system is fail-safe and fault-tolerant with multiple levels of safety systems. Sharp research has covered a wide range of activity from preventive maintenance and longer-lasting materials through innovative equipment and a multitude of safety devices. Sharp has produced a variety of products. Even after Sharp winds down, testing, evaluation, and implementation will continue under the guidance of FHWA. If you are interested in any of these highway maintenance products, contact FHWA at the number on your screen.