Investigation of pavement friction behavior based on the skid-resistance contribution zone

Traditional pavement friction studies often focus on full-depth textures, although only the top texture directly contributes to skid resistance. This study introduces the novel concept of the skid-resistance contribution zone (SRCZ) and investigates the friction degradation patterns of three types of pavement surfaces based on this concept. An accelerated pavement testing device was employed to simulate surface texture wear, and both the pavement friction and the SRCZ area were measured at regular intervals. A total of 69 three-dimensional surface textures were collected, and four categories of texture parameters were analyzed. The results indicate that pavement friction decreased by 20.83% to 47.17% after 500k wear cycles. On average, the gray correlation values between the friction and the SRCZ-related height and volume parameters were 12.53% higher than those derived from the full-depth texture. Furthermore, a pavement friction prediction model based on six SRCZ-related parameters was developed, achieving an R-squared value of 0.86.