Term of Award

Spring 2020

Degree Name

Master of Science, Civil Engineering

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Civil Engineering and Construction

Committee Chair

Junan Shen

Committee Member 1

Xiaoming Yang

Committee Member 2

Roger Purcell

Abstract

Salts, as deicers have been used since the 1940s as an easy way of melting snow and ice on road pavements during winter. Deicers play a huge role in the winter treatment of road pavements but can also reduce the durability of asphalt. Several studies have investigated the harmful effect of deicers on asphalt and concrete pavements. However, only a few studies focused on a way to improve the use of deicers by reducing the harm deicers could have on pavements and improving their efficiency to melt ice and snow. To better understand the deicing process and to enhance winter treatment of roads, this present study analyzed the freezing point of different concentrations of various deicers and their retention on different pavement surfaces. A series of tests were done in the laboratory on solutions with a varied concentration of sodium and calcium chloride procured from the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and commercial samples to determine the solutions’ freezing point. The retention ability of the Open-Graded Asphalt Friction Course, Superpave Asphalt and, Portland Concrete slabs were also determined for different doses of spray and wet states (dry and saturated) of the slabs. Melting points were measured in the laboratory to give an indication of the performance of each brine concentration to understand the melting process of snow and ice in contact with the brines. The retention values of the solution were measured to the percentage of the solution sprayed on pavements that will be retained to melt ice and snow. The test results showed: 1) increase concentration of sodium chloride or calcium chloride gave a lower freezing point; 2) for a solution of 23% of sodium chloride, the freezing point decreased as the concentration of calcium chloride is increased; 3) the purity difference of GDOT salt samples and commercial samples had an obvious effect on the freezing point; 4) the measured freezing points differed a little bit from the theoretic calculation, but linearly-related; 5) the ability of retention of slabs were affected by the amount of brine applied and the type of condition of slabs.

INDEX WORDS: Deicers, Freezing point, Sodium chloride, Calcium chloride, Melting point.

OCLC Number

1166306458

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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