Abstract

Friction is an indicator of the safety level supplied by a pavement. It is obtained by skid resistance and texture measures performed with static and high performance devices. Because the physical principle applied by each equipment differs from one another, it is necessary to harmonize measures in order to compare them. From literature review different harmonization procedures are identified: equipment direct correlations, high scale harmonization experiments and statistical analysis of skid resistance measures. Harmonization based on direct correlations and statistical analysis has the disadvantage that they do not consider texture as a variable, making them applicable only under certain conditions. In this paper, a harmonization methodology is proposed based on the PIARC (the World Road Association) harmonization procedure. The proposed methodology has the advantage that a reduced amount of data is needed and also texture measures are considered. From the application of the methodology under data simulation it is concluded that under a certain texture range the correlation is almost linear. This range depends on the texture measurement device; as, when using accurate equipments non-linear distortions are deduced under low texture levels.