Tyrolit introduces cheaper road surfacing to UK

Introduced to the UK by Tyrolit, the diamond grinding technique of road resurfacing is half the cost of overlaying concrete with asphalt, faster and requires lower investment in capital plant.

The effectiveness of renovating worn concrete roads by retexturing the surface has been proven in the UK by Concrete Cutters (Sarum), a specialist cutting and sawing contractor.

It is also more environmentally friendly, having a lower carbon footprint than asphalt, and results in a road surface that is noticeably quieter than untreated concrete when traffic is flowing.

The residue that is removed from the road surface can be recycled for other uses.

Diamond grinding involves removing irregularities from concrete roads by grinding away between 3-10mm from the surface.

This flattens the road by evening out any undulations and at the same time retextures the surface to improve skid resistance.

Even though roughening the surface actually decreases the contact area between tyre and road, braking is improved.

Moreover, the less the contact area, the lower the noise.

In practice, traffic driving over a textured surface emits considerably less sound energy than if the surface were smooth.

This has profound implications, as if housing is within 300m of a trunk road, UK law requires the Highways Agency to consider the detrimental effects of noise and how it can be reduced.

Road surface texturing has the potential to reduce costs by eliminating more expensive mitigation measures, such as barriers, fences, earth mounds and overlay materials.

Tyrolit is a manufacturer of equipment for grinding and grooving concrete roads and airport runways.

PC6000 road grinders that are supplied by Tyrolit's Diamond Products subsidiary are rated at 6,000BHP.

They are fitted with 250 Tyrolit diamond saw blades of 450mm diameter, 4mm thick, spaced 1.2mm apart, providing a grinding head length of 1.3m.

Blade segments that do the cutting can comprise synthetic diamond grains of various sizes in a hard, sintered metal matrix.

Grinding is achieved by the dual action of head rotation and hydraulic pressure downwards against the road surface, in the presence of water.

The texture imparted to the road surface is longitudinal rather than transverse, as the former is quieter when tyres roll over it.

Reductions in noise level compared with a smooth concrete surface with traffic flowing at 30 to 50mph are between 4-6dBA.

As a point of comparison, a doubling of traffic density produces an increase in noise level of 3dBA.

At higher vehicle speeds, the noise reduction is even more apparent, as the top six decibels contributes one-third of the audible sound energy at 80dBA.

SCRIM (Sideways force Coefficient Routine Investigation Machine) tests on the textured concrete reveal an average increase in skid resistance of 54 per cent compared with a smooth road surface.

Figures from Wisconsin Department of Transportation show that a diamond ground surface decreases accident levels by 42 per cent in both dry and wet conditions.

Other advantages of diamond grinding include shorter road closures, the ability to retexture one lane without affecting adjacent lanes that may have acceptable surface characteristics, and elimination of the need to taper overlays at motorway junctions and side streets.

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