Tire–Road Contact Area on Asphalt Concrete Pavement and Its Relationship with the Skid Resistance

Sufficient pavement skid resistance is one of the essential factors to ensure traffic safety. The real contact area (Ar) between the tire and road is significant for understanding and improving the skid resistance performance. In this study, the tire–road contact area is measured by squeezing a smooth underside-dyed rubber block into the specimens, using a self-designed fixture mounted on the universal test machine. The three-dimensional (3D) printing technology is used to separate the specimens with multi-scale roughness. Surface texture on 29 AC pavements is obtained by a 3D scanner and qualified by the root-mean-square surface height (Sq), to investigate the impact of pavement texture on the Ar. The skid resistance on 23 AC road sections is measured using the T2GO system, and the pavement texture is recorded, to discuss the influence of the Ar on the skid resistance. The results indicate that the multi-scale roughness rarely affects the measured contact area once the concerned wavelength is less than 0.6 mm. The Ar decreases with the Sq following a power function but has weak correlation with the friction coefficient. This study could provide an in-depth understanding of the tire–road contact and lays a foundation for optimizing the contact-related pavement performance.