Review of recent developments in surface dressing

Although surface dressing as a maintenance operation is long-established in the UK, few would argue that the rate of development over the last ten years has been faster than ever before. Highway engineers and contractors have had to react positively to the changed circumstances represented by increases in volumes of traffic and increased weights and speeds of vehicles. These requirements have led to the development of surface dressing binders with improved initial adhesion and an increase in the range of temperatures over which these binders perform satisfactorily. It is this need to produce dressings which can withstand the stresses imposed by traffic during their early life, that has also led to the development of the 'racked-in' system of surface dressing. Racked-in dressings now represent a substantial proportion of the work carried out on main roads and there can be no doubt that the mechanical interlocking which takes place between the larger and smaller aggregates does substantially reduce loss of chippings during the early life of dressings.