Study on Asphalt Pavement Surface Texture Degradation Using 3-D Image Processing Techniques and Entropy Theory

Surface texture is a very important factor affecting the anti-skid performance of pavements. In this paper, entropy theory is introduced to study the decay behavior of the three-dimensional macrotexture and microtexture of road surfaces in service based on the field test data collected over more than 2 years. Entropy is found to be feasible for evaluating the three-dimensional macrotexture and microtexture of an asphalt pavement surface. The complexity of the texture increases with the increase of entropy. Under the polishing action of the vehicle load, the entropy of the surface texture decreases gradually. The three-dimensional macrotexture decay characteristics of asphalt pavement surfaces are significantly different for different mixture designs. The macrotexture decay performance of asphalt pavement can be improved by designing appropriate mixtures. Compared with the traditional macrotexture parameter Mean Texture Depth (MTD) index, entropy contains more physical information and has a better correlation with the pavement anti-skid performance index. It has significant advantages in describing the relationship between macrotexture characteristics and the anti-skid performance of asphalt pavement.