Complete pavement removal on Route 220

Greensboro | North Carolina

Proving the high quality of asphalt paving is a key concern in the road construction industry around the world, and most particularly in the USA. Maintaining a consistently high material temperature immediately after paving has a crucial impact on quality. Indeed, this is the only way to ensure that an adequate timeframe is available for final compaction by rollers. Proof of the paving temperature is being increasingly requested, specifically in several US states. This is good reason for Thompson-Arthur to take the lead in this development. The construction company from Greensboro, North Carolina, invested in RoadScan, the temperature-measurement system from VÖGELE. This innovation was used for the first time during the complete removal of several sections of Route 220 in the metropolitan area of Greensboro, practically on the company‘s own doorstep.

VÖGELE‘s new RoadScan technology not only delivers proof of quality for clients and contractors once the construction work has been completed, it assists users during the construction process itself. If, for example, feed trucks arriving at the job site deliver a mix load that has already cooled down too much, the paving team can react immediately and actively influence the quality parameters specified. This is made possible by real-time thermoscan photos shown on the color display of the SUPER paver operator‘s ErgoPlus 3 console. The paver at the Greensboro job site was a SUPER 2000-3i. From now on, whenever Thompson-Arthur completes a project, it will have a detailed report proving that the work was performed within the correct temperature window – thanks to the GPS reports, including precise geodata. This data can be easily read out via a special USB flash drive, and analyzed on a PC using the WITOS Paving Analysis software.

Of course, there is a lot more to high quality paving than just measuring, monitoring and recording the correct asphalt temperature. Above all else, the conditions required to maintain the correct temperature first need to be created – along the entire width and length of the job site. Material feeders are effective instruments in this context, laying the basis for continuous paving processes. Decoupling the transfer of material from the feed truck to the paver ideally allows paving to be carried out without interruption. It eliminates a possible source of paving errors by preventing paver standstill, which can lead to the mix cooling down in front of the screed. Another key advantage is that the jolts generated by the feed trucks docking onto the material feeders are not transmitted to the pavers, and are therefore also not passed on to the screed. This means that the freshly paved surface bears no signs of these impacts. Thompson-Arthur consequently opted for another VÖGELE innovation on Route 220: the cutting-edge MT 3000-2i Offset PowerFeeder. The VÖGELE PowerFeeder contributes not only to productivity and quality but also to occupational safety. “Working with this material feeder is so much more relaxed and it provides a much better overview. The driver‘s seats offer greater stability and provide operators with an unobstructed view of their entire surroundings,” says a delighted Richard Rizzo, Paving Superintendent at Thompson-Arthur.

The conditions for high-quality asphalt paving results were ensured with the help of the VÖGELE PowerFeeder and the RoadScan temperature-measurement system. The paving itself was a job for Thompson-Arthur‘s SUPER 2000-3i machine. “The paving job was all in a day‘s work for our SUPER 2000-3i. Our relatively new VÖGELE paver has already paid off in hundreds of operating hours, and excels in terms of its technical advancement,” explains Rizzo. “All the members of our paving team have become real fans of this technology, and could operate the machine in their sleep. You can see this in the results.”

When it came to operating VÖGELE‘s new PowerFeeder, however, the paving team was not so well versed. “But the ErgoPlus operating system made it easy for us to learn the ropes. As a paver operator, I‘m already familiar with the operating consoles on the SUPER pavers, so I had a perfect command of the machine from the word go. In addition to the operating console, the MT 3000-2i Offset PowerFeeder also has a joystick for controlling the pivoting conveyor. Operation is unbelievably simple and the joystick is highly responsive. The possibility of pivoting the conveyor is a huge asset, too. Other material feeders cannot do this. I can imagine us working on job sites in the future where this technology will give us a previously unthinkable degree of flexibility – for example, because the paver can also be fed from the side,” explains Undra Robinson, Paver and Material Feeder Operator at Thompson-Arthur. The challenges of the complete pavement removal and reconstruction job on Route 220 did not end with the asphalt paving. “For me, it was exciting to see how practical RoadScan is in real-life application,” adds Rizzo.  

However, the sixty-four million dollar question is: How well did the high-tech equipment perform on the job? “It was astonishing how smoothly everything went. We had defined several sections on which we wanted to work at different speeds. We found that both the paving team and the technology took a fast paving speed in their stride,” comments Richard Rizzo. Reconstruction of Route 220 started on a 550 ft-long section, on which the SUPER 2000-3i and the MT 3000-2i Offset worked at 30 fpm. Further sections followed at a faster pace. Beginning at 40 fpm, the paving speed was first raised to 80 fpm and then to 100 fpm – a pace that was sustained on all further sections of the Greensboro project. The specified minimum surface temperature of 250 °F behind the paver was reliably maintained on all sections, even at high paving speeds, as the RoadScan thermoscans impressively prove. As a result, Thompson-Arthur complied with the criteria specified by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MN DOT), just as intended.  

Complete removal and reconstruction of several sections on Route 220 near Greensboro, North Carolina