May 2015 Section Meeting

The ITE Hawaii Section meeting was held on May 27th, on the 9th floor of the Fasi Municipal Building.

President Pete Pascua opened the meeting having everyone introduce themselves.  He thanked Gordon for providing lunch, and announced that the money collected for lunch will be donated to the Western District Student Endowment Fund in honor of C.S. Papacostas.  Pete also thanked those that volunteered and provided shuttle service for Costas’ funeral, as well as everyone that attended.  It was also announced that our Annual Meeting Grant will be renamed the Constantinos S. Papacostas Annual Meeting Grant in honor of Costas.  At the District Annual Meeting, July 19-22, in Las Vegas, a moment of silence will be held in his honor as well as others within the ITE community that have passed.  The International Meeting and Exhibit, August 2-5, will be in Hollywood, FL.  Our Hawaii Section Annual Meeting will be on June 24th, at the Plaza Club.  Ballots for our Section 2015-2016 officers went out last week, please cast your vote.

Western District Vice President Cathy Leong announced that Western District ballots should be coming out on June 5th, and the International ballots on June 19th.  She also wanted to thank everyone who donated to the Student Endowment Fund in Costas’ name, more than $1300 has already been donated.  Should anyone need assistance in making a donation, she’ll be happy to help them.  A spotlight on Costas will be on the Endowment website, and a plaque will also be given at the Annual District Meeting.

Vice President Natasha Soriano introduced Dr. Adrian Ricardo Archilla, professor at the UH Moana, speaking on Top-Down Fatigue Cracking in High Temperature Environments.

Dr. Archilla started his presentation saying that Hawaii may not have the hottest or the coldest weather, but in Hawaii temperatures can get hot everyday.  He stated that from the moment asphalt pavement is built it experiences stress.  The distress of pavement is categorized by bottom-up fatigue, top-down fatigue cracking (TDFC), thermal cracking, rutting, and by roughness index.  Fatigue or Alligator cracking starts from the bottom, and moves its way to the surface, indicating that the structure has failed.  Early stages of TDFC will appear as longitudinal cracks along the wheel path.  Dr. Archilla showed picture examples of cracking, including roads on Oahu, one with both TDFC and rutting that occurs in cold temperatures.  He encourages everyone to look at the roads, and identify what kind of distress is occurring.  Dr. Archilla discussed the AASHTO MEPDG Manual of Practice, now known as Pavement ME Design.  Traffic, material properties, and environment are inputted to select a trial pavement structure.  An analysis takes place, and pavement response and performance models are created to determine if the pavement meets criteria.  It was explained that fatigue testing equipment is used to apply Miner’s hypothesis to calculate damage as a ratio of loading in an increment of time over the number of repetition before failure.  Pavement experiences different amounts of stress throughout the day, dependent on temperature and frequency.  Dr. Archilla had graphs showing colder temperatures having a higher modulus, but explained frequency has a higher effect.  He recommends monitoring actual temperature at different times of the day rather than just checking at one point in the day.

The floor was open to questions.  Only one question was asked: So are we supposed to design for fatigue cracking?  Dr. Archilla answered no, we need to catch it at the right time so that it does not progress.  Top-down fatigue can be fixed with milling and treatment.