UT Tyler professor awarded TxDOT grant for road safety enhancement

TYLER – A UT Tyler professor has been awarded a TxDOT grant of nearly $600,000 to enhance the asphalt currently being used in highway/road resurfacing projects for improved wet-weather driving. Mena Souliman, PhD, is an associate professor and the Ronald D. Brazzel Endowed Professor of Civil Engineering at the university. The Texas A&M Transportation Institute will work with Souliman on the three-year project. Souliman and his collaborators will examine the current highway/road construction processes in the hope of decreasing crashes on wet resurfaced pavements. The 2021 “Weather Conditions for Crashes” report from TxDOT found that “rain” was the most repeated weather condition behind “clear/cloudy” in all reported crashes.

“The current design methodology for asphalt and seal coat surfaces is limited when considering safety aspects like friction and surface texture, also known as skid resistance,” said Souliman as quoted in a news release. “Our goal is to develop a laboratory-based, friction prediction system to select the pavement surface type and coarse aggregate types that will provide adequate skid resistance over the life of the pavement surface.”