APPLICATION OF LASERS IN

HIGHWAY ENGINEERING

Tuesday, April 23, 2019 S.C.E.M 1

 Contents
1. Laser full form
2. Four Important Process of LASER
3. Desirable Properties of Lasers
4. Introduction
5. Application of LASERS in Highway Engineering
 Road Profiling
 Pavement Surface Deflection
 Bridge Deflection
 Speed Checkers
6. Advantages of using lasers in Highway Engineering
7. Conclusion
8. References

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 What is LASER?
L - Light
A - Amplification by
S - Stimulated
E -Emission of
R - Radiation

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 Four Important Process of Laser Are:
1. Absorption
2. Spontaneous Emission
3. Pumping & Population Inversion
4. Stimulated Emission of
Electromagnetic Radiation

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 INTRODUCTION
• There is a growing need for strategic management
of the national roadway network to preserve the
large capital investment.
• Pavement management activities require accurate,
fast and cost effective pavement test techniques to
record current status of the pavement structures in
rapid manner.
• Laser technique has the characteristics of high
accuracy, high resolution and repeatability, and
has been widely applied in the range finding.
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 The road profile is the shape of the road in the
vertical plane along a reference line.
 Profilometer is a measuring instrument used to
measure a surface's profile.

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 PROFILER COMPONENTS
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 VEHICLE FITTED WITH LASER PROFILER
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 LASER PROFILER
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 Graph

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 Pavement surface deflection measurements are the primary
means of evaluating flexible structure and rigid pavements
load transfer

 Deflection is important criteria for pavement structural layer

stiffness and the sub grade thus; many characteristics of
flexible pavements can be determined by measuring its
deflection in response to load.

Types of Deflectometer
(1) Texas Rolling Dynamic Deflectometer (RDD);
(2) Airfield Rolling Weight Deflectometer (ARWD);
(3) Rolling Wheel Deflectometer (RWD);
(4) Road Deflection Tester (RDT); and
(5) High-Speed Deflectograph.
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The RWD is constructed using a specially
designed tractor-trailer which is 53 feet long
trailer has a single rear axle that is loaded to
18,000 lb
Objective: To measure pavement surface
deflections at traffic speeds and to
characterize the load carrying capacity of in-
service roads

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The RWD measures wheel deflections at the pavement surface by
means of a spatially coincident method.

What is spatially coincident method?

 As the RWD travels on top of the pavement, triangulation lasers
mounted, on a 25.5-ft. Aluminium beam and placed at 8-ft.
intervals, are used to measure surface deflections

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 The beam is mounted on the right side of the
semitrailer to follow the right wheel path on the right
lane, usually the weakest location on the pavement
structure.
 Three spot lasers are placed in front of the loaded
wheel to define the unloaded surface.
 One spot laser is placed directly on top of the loaded
dual-tire assembly in order to measure the deflected
surface.
 The laser sensors are set to collect a reading at a fixed
interval of 0.6 inch at all truck speeds
 The upgraded system has a 0.4 inch measurement
deflection range and has an accuracy of ± 0.001 inch

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In order to detect the performance of bridge, it usually needs
to determine the deformation of key parts of it. The
deformation is caused by changes of natural conditions and
long-term load even overload. It maybe bring damage when
exceeds the certain threshold.
Box Diagram of Instrument :

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 The deflection measurement system is composed of laser
emitter, laser receiver and upper computer
 The laser beam should be
1. long-term stability
2. anti-interference
3. high positioning accuracy
In order to ensure the accurate positioning of the spot centre.
Working:
1. Laser projects on the fixed laser screen
2. Laser image will be sampled by CCD (Charge Coupled Device) and sent to
the MCU (Micro Controller Unit)
3. A laser spot is formed in the imaging, and it is processed by
digital image processing technology
4. The coordinate of the centre of the laser spot will be calculated
5. In order to reduce measurement error, this study introduces tilt
sensor to measure the angle of the laser emitter.

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 A is the datum position
 B is the laser light spot position
 L is the length of AB line
 Φ is the obliquity of light sot receiver relative to datum
plane
Δ= l cos Φ (Δ – Displacement)

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Advantages of Laser system for Calculating Bridge Deflection

 Measure bridge deflection from a range of up to 30m.

 A computer-controlled scanning system controls the
laser and allows the system to scan a large area of a
structure.
 Measurements resolution of less than one mm is
possible with the system.
 No special target or surface preparation is required.

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 LASER BASED SPEED CHECKERS
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A laser speed gun shoots a very short burst of laser light and then
waits for it to reflect off the vehicle. The gun counts the number of
nanoseconds it takes for the round trip, and by dividing by 2 it can
calculate the distance to the car.
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Since no targets are required for the laser system, access to
difficult-to-reach areas under the bridge is not necessary.
Also laser has fewer source of interference and has better
ability to detect decelerating vehicles.

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