Friction Assessment in Pavement Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

The knowledge of skid resistance, a term for the contribution that the road makes to tire–road friction, is useful for different purposes related to users’ safety: evaluation of accident risk, pavement maintenance, driver assistance, etc.

Despite valuable progress made thanks to research by actors involved in pavement engineering (researchers, road authorities, tire manufacturers, road companies, etc.), there remains a need to continue efforts to assess the skid resistance of existing and newly designed pavements in relation to the increasing development of electric vehicles and, more generally, transport modes dedicated to more sustainable mobility.

We invite researchers to submit contributions to this Special Issue, which aims to contribute to the state of the art of friction assessment in pavement engineering by focusing on the following aspects (non-exhaustive list):

• Methologies for friction assessment of surfaces other than roadways: runways, metro rails, composite pavements dedicated to charging of electric vehicles, etc.
• Measuring devices: development / state of the art of devices measuring friction (especially when the surfaces are covered by contaminants like snow or ice) or its influencing factors (surface texture, water, snow, etc.); technologies based on 3D images; harmonization methods towards a common scale
• Influencing factors: new insights into the effect of “traditional” factors (speed, water depth, texture, etc.); effects of contaminants other than water (snow—fresh, compacted, slush; ice, particulate matters, etc.); new influencing factors raised by new transport modes
• Prediction and classification: modeling of tire–road friction (including the relationship texture-friction); classification of surface states; approaches derived from Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Minh-Tan Do
Guest Editor

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