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M. Hoffmann, P. Nutz, R. Blab:
"New findings in winter maintenance and their implementation in Austria";
Talk: SIRWEC 2012, Helsinki; 2012-05-23 - 2012-05-25; in: "SIRWEC 2012", (2012), 8 pages.

Winter maintenance is essential to provide a high accessibility of regions with extensive snow fall or long winter periods. Typical decisions on a strategic level include choosing between de-icing agents, defining minimum treatment intervals, route quality targets, generalized winter maintenance strategies and specific application rates. On a practical level the winter maintenance personal has usually not enough time or information for an optimal consideration of all relevant factors in a changing environment. The winter maintenance personal is first in line if accidents happen and thus they tend towards a "safe approach" that differs from optimal application rates or timing of treatment. The comparison of typical winter maintenance situations with practical application rates showed a high potential of savings by preventing unnecessary salting. This leads to the main research question of optimized application rates and winter maintenance strategies for all typical situations that can still be applied in winter maintenance practise. To answer these questions the federal states of Austria, the Austrian highway operating company (ASFINAG) and the federal ministry of Transport (BMVIT) funded a research project at the Vienna University of Technology. Based on extensive field and lab testing at the Institute of Transportation the complex mechanical and physical impact of all main factors and their influence on winter maintenance could be determined. Practical testing and persistent discussion with selected personnel completed the verification and implementation of the findings in a comprehensive winter maintenance model. Further results include a compact practical winter maintenance guide and training courses for winter maintenance personnel. The presented paper gives a short overview of the findings with special emphasis on the contents of the winter maintenance guide.

Winter maintenance, application rate, salting, safe roads, user guide

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_211473.pdf