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After almost a year of consultations Concrete Cutters [Sarum] Ltd a specialist cutting and sawing contractor with more than 40 years experience in concrete renovation conducted the first highway grinding trials in the UK. |
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A stretch of one of the busiest sections of dual carriageway around London. A one mile section of the A12 connecting London's orbital motorway the M25 with Felixstowe on the east coast had become heavily worn, with uneven expansion and contraction joints between the concrete sections giving poor ride quality and a road surface that had been degraded by heavy traffic resulting in diminished skid resistance. The process in itself is a simple one, the grinding head removes between 3 to 10mm from the road surface both grading the road by evening out any undulations, and at the same time retexturing the surface to improve skid resistance. Interestingly the roughened surface actually decreases the contact area between tyre and road and whilst this improves braking the added major benefit is a drastic reduction in the noise levels from traffic. The test site of 4 lanes around 500 M long were closed overnight and the traffic diverted and a total area of 7500 M2 was machined over a 6 night period. This meant minimal disruption and congestion to the heavy daily traffic flows and because such a small amount of the road surface is removed the road could be reopened every day with no discernable difference between the machined and the non machined surfaces until the work had been completed. Also no changes to crash barriers or consideration to bridge clearance heights were necessary and no remedial works to drains and other road furniture were required. The results were better than could be expected an even and safe road surface with a dramatic reduction in noise levels in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of Asphalt overlay. The news of the process travelled as fast as the vehicles on it and 4 other trial sections were chosen and another 24,000 M2 of highway have since been ground. In the 6 months since the first trial and after continued stringent monitoring by the highways agency the benefits first experienced have not diminished. Evidence from the US anticipates that the benefits can last up to 10 years with the ability to re-machine and retexture the concrete surface to further extend the life of the road after this period.
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