AustStab

AUSTSTAB JULY CEO REPORT

AUSTSTAB’S 24TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND CONFERENCE WILL HAVE A RANGE OF FANTASTIC SPEAKERS SAYS CEO GRAHAM HENNESSY.

The key event for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) is the Annual Gala Dinner on the 24th of July, which is proudly sponsored by Caterpillar.

At the dinner, winners of the annual Awards of Excellence will be announced. The Awards are open to any individuals and Australian private and public organisations working in the field of pavement recycling and stabilisation.

Entrants do not need to be members of the Association to be eligible although contractors completing the work must be registered in accordance to the AustStab and ARRB accreditation scheme.

Further information that includes the AGM three-day program, AustStab membership details and information on the AustStab/ ARRB accreditation scheme are available on the AustStab website.

The nominations for these awards are now closed and voting is currently underway. There have been strong submissions in all of the following categories: • Work Health and Safety. • Industry Excellence in Consulting,

Research or Education. • Excellence in Sustainability or

Innovation. • Excellence in Pavement Recycling and Stabilisation in Local Government. • Young Stabiliser of the Year.

This year, AustStab have included additional technical content in the program.

After lunch on Wednesday 24 July, there will be four guest presenters covering topics directly related to improving the industry. Three of these presentations have been confirmed and brief details of the presenters and their topics are as follows:

Joe Grobler’s specialty includes initial and detailed pavement assessments.

DR. JAMES GRENFELL, SENIOR TECHNICAL LEADER, AUSTRALIAN ROAD RESEARCH BOARD Since joining ARRB in February 2017 Dr. Grenfell has focussed on current Austroads projects by looking at improving knowledge of foamed bitumen stabilised pavements and the use of lightly bound pavement materials in pavement construction.

In particular, Dr. Grenfell will cover Austroads project TT2046 – improving the cost effectiveness of foamed bitumen stabilised pavements.

The project aims to provide an improved understanding of the performance of foamed bitumen stabilised (FBS) pavements through full-scale

accelerated pavement testing.

One half of this project is to assess the fatigue performance of these foamed bitumen stabilised pavements under Accredited Loading Facility (ALF).

Three test strips comprising of a 100 per cent granite host material, a 50 per cent granite – 50 per cent Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) lane and an 80 per cent previously cement treated – 20 per cent granite material, each stabilised with 3 per cent foamed bitumen and 2 per cent hydrated lime are being assessed.

The three test strips have been constructed and are being subjected to accelerated loading using ALF.

Initial pavement loading was undertaken using an ALF load of 40 Kilonewtons (kN).

This was undertaken up to 286,000 passes in each lane. At this point, the load was increased to 60 kN to accelerate pavement failure. Traffic loading is continuing at 60 kN and at present more than 600,000 load passes have been applied to each test strip.

During the ALF testing, the test pavements were continuously monitored to assess their fatigue performance. This presentation will detail to the findings to date.

DR. IAN VAN WIJK AND DR. BARI THOMAS, AURECON Dr. Van Wijk is Technical Director, Infrastructure and a pavement management and pavement engineering specialist with more than 35 years’ professional experience across the world.

Dr. Bari Thomas is the Ground and Underground Engineering Lead for Queensland at Aurecon with over 20 years of international experience.

Their topic will be the use of stabilisation to improve the performance of unsealed roads and the selection of additives for the stabilisation of subgrades.

The first part will use condition deterioration predictions and sustainability outcomes to quantify the performance and benefits of the stabilisation of unsealed road pavements.

The second will report on the results of laboratory-based research into the effects of temperature, mellowing and admixture composition on stabilised clay soils.

This topic is of great interest as AustStab has carried out a number of lime stabilisation trials of unsealed roads over the past few years.

AustStab welcomes the input from a leading consulting organisation such as Aurecon, which is also a member of the organisation.

JOE GROBLER, PRINCIPAL PROFESSIONAL LEADER – FUTURE TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE, AUSTRALIAN ROAD RESEARCH BOARD Joe Grobler is a specialist pavement engineer and Principal Professional Leader at the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB). His experience includes initial and detailed pavement assessments, material investigations, mechanistic modelling, detailed design, material specifications, and construction phase services.

Since joining ARRB in 2016, Mr. Grobler has been involved with a number of strategically significant research projects focussed on asphalt technology, crumb rubber modified binders and stabilised materials.

As ARRB’s Agreement Manager for the National Asset Centre of Excellence (NACOE) in Queensland, he is also responsible for the delivery of the multimillion dollar annual research program in collaboration with the Queensland Department of Transport in Main Roads.

Mr Grobler’s presentation will cover designing and constructing resilient pavements to deal with extreme weather, as well as some of the key lessons learnt from earlier floods in Queensland.