Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)

cee.engr.ucdavis.edu

Program Description

The University of California Pavement Research Center UCPRC has conducted research work on concrete pavements since the 1950’s. Currently the majority of the researchers are associated with the UC-Davis campus, while the bulk of the laboratory work is performed at UC-Berkeleys’ Richmond Field Station.  Most of the funding for the UCPRC comes from Caltrans.   The UCPRC staff includes ten PhD researchers working on topics such as pavements designs for highway and low volume roads, evaluation of asphalt mixes, pavement surface characteristics, pavement construction productivity, and mechanistic-empirical designs. The number of active projects is usually around 20 at any given time, mostly for the Caltrans’ Division of Research and Innovation. Dynatest Consulting has been a long-term partner to the program, supporting operations in many projects.  The UCPRC main offices are located in northern California, 10 miles from Sacramento, and less that 2hrs from San Francisco’s Bay area and Lake Tahoe.

Facilities

The UCPRC operates two HVS for accelerated pavement testing, an HWD, and an instrumented car for evaluation of smoothness, texture and tire/pavement noise. It also has equipment for coring and testing unbound materials in the field. It counts with equipment for the fabrication of pavement test specimens, as well as instruments to test properties on cores and beams.

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