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How Do I Create a Parabolic Road Surface From Surveyed Strings?

  • 1.  How Do I Create a Parabolic Road Surface From Surveyed Strings?

    Posted 03-20-2019 11:02

    I had an interesting question from a paving contractor in Canada asking me how to create a Parabolic Shaped Road Surface from two in field measured strings. 

     

    The Curb and Gutter is in the ground, the Paving Contractor now has to create a Surface Model that fits the Curb and Gutter exactly and the road surface between the two C&G Sections has to be parabolic - where the parabolic surface is defined by 2 Quarter Points and a Mid Point (defined as 25%, 50%, 75% of the Road width at any point. Road Width being defined as the distance between the two strings perpendicular to a centerline that was not provided in this example (but I assume probably exists somewhere at least). At the 2 Quarter Points I want to raise the surface by 0.12m and at the mid point by 0.16m from the grade between the Left and Right Edges (surveyed strings).

     

    The customer stated that a typical job takes them several hours to compute and they were looking for a better / faster way to do this using TBC Corridors. This workflow does the whole computation in about 15 mins once you know how to use the Corridor Model to compute all the necessary points based on the provided data.

     

    I enclose a Video of the Process and have requested customer permission to share the VCE file so that you can look at it in your own time. 

     

    Hope that this helps all you paving guys out there - it is all about productivity and great quality models

     

    The Answer to the question has the video post

     

    Happy Modeling

     

    Alan



  • 2.  Re: How Do I Create a Parabolic Road Surface From Surveyed Strings?

    Posted 03-20-2019 11:07

    Here is the Video - If I get approvals to share the data that will come shortly