• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2012

The performance of road markings is classified into the visibility at daytime, night time, wet condition and rainy conditions. The objective of this study is to obtain the driving safety of drivers under conditions of unstable weather condition such as the rain. The visibility of road markings is closely related to the preview time and detection distances and the ways to improve road marking materials and increase the dry retroreflectivity and wet retroreflectivity, which are the measures of daytime and nighttime visibility is researched to decrease the traffic accidents. For this purpose, Road marking glass beads with the refraction rate of 1.5 and 2.2 are introduced to raise the retroreflectivity. After investigating the minimum threshold retroreflectivity and Install Minimum retroreflectivity at home and abroad, minimum control values for the roadmarking visibility and improvement of nightime rainy retroreflectivity are suggested by physical properties and retroreflectivity experiments.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.685-694
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• 2016

Visibility of lane marking is impaired at night, or in case of rain, and thereby threatens traffic safety. Recently, various studies and technology have been developed to improve lane marking visibility, such as the extension of lane marking life expectancy (up to 1.5 times), improvement of lane marking equipment, improvement of lane marking visibility (32.7%) by applying phosphorescent material mixed paint, and expressway lane design standards alternative (length 6m, gap 12m, width 13cm: 27.8% of painted surface are reduced) adoption with ergonomic analysis. In this study, a set of cost-benefit analyses was performed for the cases where such techniques were applied. Based on the literature review, 26.9% of traffic accidents would be prevented by improving lane marking visibility by 32.7%; accident reduction benefit was calculated as much as 12.5 billion KRW. Meanwhile, total increased cost when introducing phosphorescent material mixed paint and lane design standards alternative is calculated as 30.6 billion KRW. However, economic feasibility could not be secured with 0.41 of cost-benefit ratio when applied to the expressway network as a whole. Additionally, cost-benefit (B/C) analysis was applied to each of the top 20 night accident hot spots and the results of B/C ratios were between 0.67 and 4.20, showing that 11 out of 20 spot sections of expressway can have economic feasibility. This results indicate, with this kind of pavement marking applied to accident hot spots in rural expressway, better visibility and economic feasibility can be guaranteed through traffic accident reduction. Some limitations and future research agenda have also been discussed.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.75-82
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• 2011

There is the uncertain period of the construction in case of the products meeting the quality standard of KS M 6080, the quality is degraded because of the abrasive loss of the paint caused by vehicle tires as the traffic amount increases and of the loss and detachment of the glass beads providing the retroreflective function. The abrupt degradation of visibility causes the high frequency of traffic accidents at night and increases the traffic accident rate. Additional supplementary construction induces the direct material and construction costs. As the more cost induction effect than the direct cost, the traffic jam caused by the additional construction increases the indirect social costs such as time cost and vehicle cost. Hence, the study is concerned with performing the abrasion resistance test based on the EN 1436 standard to check and improve the quality of various road marking materials resulting in improving the durability of road marking materials. However, even though the difference in the durability lifetime of resins(binders) is bibliographically or theoretically clear, there was no difference in the durability lifetime (retroreflectivity aspect) of the road marking paint using these binders. The reason is that the bonding of beads was very insufficient or that the cross density caused by crack or freshness was low. Moreover, the measured wet retroreflectivity was distributed as the Rw3 or higher class in average on the basis of EN 1436 but was very insufficient on the basis of the minimum wet threshold retroreflectivity with 100mcd/($m^2{\cdot}lx$) managed overseas.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.815-825
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• 2017

Visibility of lane marking is impaired at night or in the rain, which thereby threatens traffic safety. Recently, various studies and technologies have been developed to improve lane marking visibility, such as the extension of lane marking life expectancy (up to 1.5 times), improvement of lane marking equipment productivity, improvement of lane marking visibility by applying phosphorescent material mixed paint. Cost-benefit analysis was performed with considering various benefit items that can be expected. About 45% of traffic accidents would be prevented by improving lane marking visibility. Additionally, accident reduction benefit and traffic congestion reduction benefit were calculated as much as 246 billion KRW per year and 12 billion KRW per year, respectively, by reducing repaint cycle due to enhanced durability. 45 billion KRW per year is expected to reduced with improved lane detection performance of autonomous vehicle. Meanwhile, total increased cost when introducing phosphorescent material mixed paint to 91,195km of nationwide road is identified as 1922 billion KRW per year. However, economic feasibility could not be secured with 0.16 of cost-benefit ratio when applied to the road network as a whole. In case of "Accident Hot Spot" analyzing section window (400m), one or more fatality or two or more injured (one or more injured in case of less than 2 lanes per direction) per year were caused by pavement marking related accident, economic feasibility was secured. In detail, 3.91 of cost-benefit ratio is estimated with comparison of the installation cost for 5,697 of accident hot spot and accident reduction benefit. Some limitations and future research agenda have also been discussed.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.110-116
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• 2016

A decrease in the retro-reflectivity of glass-bead-covered road paint because of a rainwater film significantly reduces the visibility of drivers at night, and has been considered as a critical cause of traffic accidents. For enhanced visibility, the microencapsulation of hydrophobically modified $SrAl_2O_4:Eu^{2+}$,$Dy^{3+}$ phosphorescent phosphor was carried out via suspension polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA). The effects of surface modification agent and radical initiator types, loading amount of phosphorescent phosphor, and microcapsule size on the phosphor content ($W_{TGA}$) in the luminous poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) microcapsules were investigated by thermogravimetric analyses (TGA). It was found that the $W_{TGA}$ value was ranged from 7 wt% to 81 wt%, which suggests suspension polymerization is suitable for the preparation of luminous microcapsules with a wide range of phosphor content. At a lower loading amount of phosphor, the $W_{TGA}$ value obviously increased as the microcapsule size decreased; however, the $W_{TGA}$ values with a higher loading amount of phosphor were less affected by the microcapsule size. The luminous microcapsules with the size range of $425{\sim}710{\mu}m$ were collected and tested as a luminous road lanes. It was found that luminance intensities of the microcapsule-coated plates remained higher than $300mcd/m^2$ for up to 100 s in darkness after 20 min of light emitting diode lamp irradiation. The results suggest that the luminous microcapsules can be a candidate for the replacement of glass beads for enhanced visibility of drivers.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.677-684
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• 2016

In order to improve the nighttime visibility of the lane, the need for the development of the automated line marking equipment is on the rise. The purpose of this study is to suggest performance assessment methodology that can be assessed from various aspects such as productivity, safety and quality performance of line marking equipment and to comprehensively analyze the performance of hand-operated and automated equipment based on field test. The following shows the results. It suggested a methodology capable of analyzing the performance of the line marking equipment in terms of productivity, safety and quality. Automated equipment for line marking was analyzed that can be obtained productivity achievement rate of 156.3% as compared with hand-operated equipment. On the basis of the expert advise and literature review, we derived twelve safety factors and ten quality factors of unit work in line marking. By utilizing the AHP technique, we estimated the importance of safety and quality factors. Automated equipment for line marking was analyzed to have been able to expect safety improvement rate of 49.8% and quality improvement rate of 47.2%. It is expected that the performance assessment methodology suggested in this study will be useful in analyzing objective and quantitative validity and expected effectiveness of the line marking equipment.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.131-140
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• 2012

Lane markings such as edgelines, centerlines, and lines that delineate lanes generally provide drivers with the various information for safe driving. Drivers can easily recognize the lane markings through the color differences between the markings and road surfaces during the daytime. However, it is a bit difficult for drivers to perceive them during the nighttime due to the lack of artificial lights. Although the glass beads with the 1.5-refractive index have been used to improve the visibility of the lane markings during the nighttime, it is still difficult for drivers to recognize the lane markings properly, especially during the rainy nighttime, which may often lead to traffic accidents. To improve the retroreflectivity and visibility of the lane markings during the rainy nighttime, the high refractive beads with the 2.4-refractive index are essentially required, but they do not work appropriately during the dry nighttime. Thus, the mixed materials with the 1.5, 1.9, and 2.4-refractive beads should be considered for the satisfactory implementation of the lane markings. This study reveals the best mixing rates of the beads by conducting benefit-cost analysis under various weather conditions in Korea. The analysis results show that the lane markings with the 100% of the 2.4-refractive beads provide the highest visibility of lane markings regardless of the roadway conditions, but the benefit-cost (B/C) ratio of the bead mixture is merely 0.46. The best mixing rate of the beads, from the highest B/C ratio viewpoint, was identified as the mixture with a 80% of 1.5-refractive beads and a 20% of 2.4-refractive beads. Some limitations and future research agenda have also been discussed.