Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Thompson, Roger John

Titel

The design and management of surface mine haul roads

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1997

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Unpaved mine haul roads provide the principal means of material transport on surface strip coal mines. Design and management of these roads was based primarily on local experience and adopted empirical guidelines. With the trend in increasing truck size, these current pavement design and management systems proved inadequate. Not only would the maintenance costs of existing roads increase, vehicle operating and maintenance costs would also increase prohibitively. The primary objective of this research was the development of a practical total haul road design and management methodology that encompasses pavement strength, wearing course functionality and road maintenance scheduling and management components. A revised mechanically derived optimal structural design is presented together with design criteria and recommended effective elastic modulus values for typical construction materials. The placement of those materials as pavement layers was analysed, such as to optimise their performance both as individual layers and over the entire structure. The development and analysis of suitable material selection guidelines for use in haul road functional design was allied to the development of a qualitative defect assessment and ranking methodology. A revised range of material selection parameters was derived based on road-user acceptibility criteria and actual material defect rankings. By analysing the trends evident in the individual defect rankings, the predictive capability of the specification was enhanced by depicting the typical functional defects arising when departures are made from the recommended material parameter limits. Maintenance design concerns the optimal frequency of wearing course maintenance commensurate with minimum vehicle operating and road maintenance costs. A qualitative road roughness evaluation technique was developed as a precursor to the development of a model for roughness progression. Expressions were developed to enable direct comparison to be made between qualitatively derived roughness and International Roughness Index (IRI). Models of vehicle operating and road maintenance cost variation with road roughness were combined with roughness progression models to determine the optimal maintenance strategy.