Effect of Bead Gun Angle and Paint Truck Speed on Longitudinal Nighttime Pavement Marking Visibility

A nighttime driving experiment was undertaken to determine the paint truck application speed and bead gun angle to maximize the visibility (defined as end detection distance) of white waterborne pavement markings in Pennsylvania. The experiment was conducted in two phases, where the first phase was intended to evaluate the speed/bead gun angle effects on newly-applied pavement markings. The second phase was intended to evaluate the speed/bead gun angle effects after the pavement markings were weathered for a period of nearly one year. The results showed that forward-facing bead gun angles produced markings with longer nighttime visibility distances than backward-facing bead gun angles, but truck application speeds did not appear to effect visibility distance in the present experiment. The relationship between pavement marking retroreflectivity and visibility distance was also evaluated in this study. For newly-applied pavement markings, it does not appear that higher levels of pavement marking retroreflectivity result in longer visibility distances in the present study. However, after the pavement markings were weathered, longer visibility distances were associated with higher levels of pavement marking retroreflectivity. Slower truck application speeds and forward-facing bead gun angles produced higher initial retroreflectivity levels than other speed/bead gun angle combinations. Several forward-facing bead gun angle/speed combinations produced the highest retroreflectivity levels after weathering the pavement markings.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: DVD
  • Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 20p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 89th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01152334
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 10-1690
  • Files: TRIS, TRB
  • Created Date: Mar 16 2010 6:12AM