Evaluation of possibilities for the climatic distribution of regions from the point of view of road construction

• Published in: The Baltic journal of road and bridge engineering Vol. 10; no. 3; pp. 262 - 268
• Main Authors: Jukneviciute-Zilinskiene, Lina, Laurinavicius, Alfredas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University 01.09.2015; RTU Press
• Subjects: air temperature; climatic distribution of regions; depth; Environmental aspects; freezing index; frost; frozen ground; Management; Road construction; road pavement structure; road weather information system; thickness; Lithuania
• ISSN: 1822-427X; 1822-4288
• DOI: 10.3846/bjrbe.2015.33

Seeking to reduce a negative impact of unfavourable weather conditions on road traffic, many countries introduce modern technologies allowing to objectively assessing meteorological conditions of roads. The world over, data from the automated meteorological stations of Road Weather Information System have been long ago used on a significantly larger scale than only for the organization of road maintenance works. International experience of introducing Road Traffic Information Systems in European Union and other countries of the world shows that Road Weather Information Systems give good results for increasing road safety, improving the level of road user information and solving the road construction issues. Road Weather Information System is a system of technologies and decision-making using historical and real-time data of roads and weather conditions. The collected and processed multi-year data from meteorological stations is a great assistance in designing or reconstructing road pavement structures. Road pavement structure is highly affected by a negative air temperature and frozen ground. The impact of negative temperature is expressed by the thickness of frost blanket course. The thickness of frost blanket course depends on a frost susceptibility of soil. To determine the thickness of frost blanket course it is necessary to assess the frost impact, therefore it was up to the purpose − climatic distribution of regions the territory of Lithuania according to the distribution of frost impact and the depth of frozen ground. Based on climatic maps compiled, a correction of the thickness of road pavement structure was suggested.