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Pavement texture plays a vital role in the development of both pavement friction and tire wear. Hence, knowledge of the effect of texture parameters on friction and tire wear will certainly assist pavement engineers in designing pavements that improve tire life without compromising the all-important skid-resistance. This paper describes the second stage of a research project undertaken to identify the fundamental texture properties that are associated with friction and wear. A analytical methodology for computer modeling of pavement texture formulated during the previous stage is now applied to model actual pavement surfaces made of asphalt and concrete. The pavement surface profiles measured by a SURTRONIX 3+ profilometer in two perpendicular directions are converted to Auto Regressive Moving Average (ARMA) models. Then, these models are used to graphically regenerate the pavement surface using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique.

Although there are established methods to measure both tire-pavement friction and pavement texture, friction has not been adequately related to pavement surface texture properties. Therefore, a study has been initiated at the University of South Florida to investigate the dependence of tire-pavement friction on pavement texture. A significant development in the first phase of the study is the formulation of a computer-based methodology that can model the 3-D random roughness of a surface with a given Mean Texture Depth (MTD) as measured by the Grease Patch Test. Examination of synthesized surfaces reveals that the MTD of a random surface is almost an invariant along a given pavement. The same procedure is extended to obtain the frequency spectrum of the generated surface using Fast Fourier Transformation. Finally, the basis of a new analytical approach that can utilize the above frequency spectrum to predict the hysteresis friction of a pavement with random roughness, is illustrated.