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Updated: July 8th, 2008 05:26 PM GMT-05:00

Paving the Iowa Speedway

NASCAR champion Rusty Wallace gives new track thumbs-up for work completed by Manatt's Inc.

Roadtec RP-195 10-foot rubber-track paver
Roadtec RP-195 10-foot rubber-track paver.
crew working on Iowa Speedway
Rusty Wallace in car
After driving numerous laps around the track, Rusty Wallace said, “This surface is flawless; a great ride. It’s simply going to offer a great racing experience and be the best racetrack in the world.”
Rusty Wallace
Rusty Wallace
Roadtec RP-195 10-foot rubber-track paver
Roadtec RP-195 10-foot rubber-track paver.
Roadtec RP-195 10-foot rubber-track paver paired with an Eagle 10 screed.
Manatt’s used windrow paving to construct the track, which meant they needed a paver that could operate in the banked turns, reaching a maximum of 14 degrees cross slope, while pushing a windrow elevator. To handle this task, Manatt’s used a Roadtec RP-195 10-foot rubber-track paver paired with an Eagle 10 screed.

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Greg Udelhofen
By Greg Udelhofen
Editor

Manatt's also made some modifications to the paver to better handle the HMA received from the windrow elevator. These modifications were primarily to stitch weld plate in and around the paver hopper to make the HMA flow through the paver better while in the banks. The modifications of adding a plate to the downhill side hopper wing to bridge the angle at the bottom of the wing also helped to avoid material accumulation in the hopper, and in the process avoid the possibility of material segregation.

An additional plate was also positioned over the dog house between the two conveyers to direct material onto the uphill conveyor and not the downhill conveyor. But modifications were minimal since the paver's anti-segregation design maintains a homogenous mix quality.

The overall pavement design was for three thin lifts and did not leave much room for error. A base course only two inches thick was applied over a tacked 10-inch-thick subbase of crushed stone. The 1 1/2-inch-thick binder course was then applied on top of this followed by a 1 1/2-inch-thick surface course.

These thin lifts did not give much room to correct any bumps in the base or underlying layers so smoothness had to start at the beginning. In order to achieve the highest smoothness possible Manatt's used a contacting ski on the joint side and a sonic non-contacting ski on the other. Compaction was achieved with a Cat CB 634C vibratory steel drum roller for initial breakdown, followed by two oscillatory Hamm HD 120 rollers. On the surface course, one of the Hamms was replaced with a rubber-tired roller.

When asked if the cameras to be implanted in the racing surface were an obstacle, Eide said, "not really at all, we just paved over them and then cut them out when we were finished."

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