The choice is often subjective, depending on the designer's experience. These rules should allow a surer choice of the appropriate type of surface treatment and thus contribute to the design of more durable pavements. The study analyses a certain number of road sections, for a total length of 200 kilometres, noting the age of the surface, the traffic density and components, the type of asphalt and the geographic location, with a special focus on central Quebec. The study is also limited to the conventional type of wearing courses used in Qu bec and known as MB4 and MB5, recycled or non-recycled, and Skip Mix. The comparison focuses on resistance to cracking, rutting and slipperiness.
Aggregate typology emerges as the most significant variable, even ahead of mix typology.
The optimum choice of asphalt is the result of a weighting between resistance to cracking or rutting. Thus, an MB5 mix is acceptable as far as these two aspects are concerned, giving way to MB4 for resistance to cracking and Skip Mix for resistance to rutting. This page is also available in 97 for Windows format.