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Members of the editorial board of the international journal Road Materials and Pavement Design with some peers: (front, from left) Professor Herve Di Benedetto; Professor Hussain Bahia; Basil Jonsson (SAT); Professor Zhongyin Guo; (back, from left) Professor Manfred Partl; Professor Bill Buttlar; Professor Andy Collop; Professor Rey Roque; the CSIR's Professor Morris de Beer; and Professor Emile Horak (invited guest speaker). |
The editorial board meeting of the international journal Road Materials and Pavement Design (RMPD) and its combined seminar held early in March were received favourably. Professor Morris de Beer of the CSIR's transport infrastructure engineering group comments, "The level of discussion proved to exceed expectations."
As a member of the editorial board of the RMPD, De Beer attended the two-day annual editorial board meeting of the journal, hosted by the CSIR this year. "It is the first time that the board meeting took place in South Africa, and as the meeting rotates among members of the editorial team, it will be held here only in 10 years' time again," he explains. The board is currently in its 10th year of existence, with De Beer being one of the founding members of the RMPD journal.
The editors agreed that the journal has a healthy future. "We especially invite colleagues from the African continent to submit papers for publication," says De Beer. Any contribution around road materials and pavement design will be considered by the editorial board. The publication is published quarterly, with the next edition due in May this year. Two special additional issues are also planned for the next two years, namely on numerical simulation and stabilised road materials, respectively.
At the end of the editorial board meeting, participants were taken on a field trip to see the CSIR-developed heavy vehicle simulator (HVS) in action. It is testing segments on the R80 - onwards to the Mabopane highway - thin concrete and thin asphalt sections of the road.
Following the editorial board meeting, a one-day seminar was held, co-hosted by the CSIR, the RMPD group and the Society for Asphalt Technology (SAT): Central Region.
CSIR President and CEO, Dr Sibusiso Sibisi, welcomed attendees, followed by a short address by Basil Jonsson, chairperson of SAT Central Region. The RMPD editors then each proceeded with high-level presentations, with De Beer concentrating on improved performance evaluation of road pavements by using measured tyre loading.
Other topics covered during the seminar included:
- Discrete element modelling in asphalt
- Rheological evaluation of bitumen emulsion during curing and setting
- Accelerated pavement testing to study reflective cracking
- High modulus asphalt base - airports (invited guest speaker)
- Linear viscoelasticity of bituminous mixtures: from the materials to the structures
- Performance of reinforced asphalt model-structures under simulated traffic loading
- Effects of ageing and healing on top-down cracking performance
- Research on quality variability control asphalt pavement construction.
Enquiries: CSIR Communication
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