Integrating VR and Simulation for Enhanced Planning of Asphalt Compaction

The current decision-making practices in road construction, are largely based on tacit knowledge, craftsmanship, tradition, and custom. This results in considerable variability in the execution of projects and deviation between as-planned and as-executed practices. The current simulation-based planning techniques are limited because they tend to present spatial and temporal characteristics of projects separately. This segregated approach ignores the interdependencies between spatial and temporal aspects of projects specially with respect to safety and process quality assessment. This is more palpable in the asphalt compaction projects because the quality of the compaction depends on a myriad of temporal (e.g., compaction speed) and spatial (e.g., homogenous compaction of the mat) parameters. Therefore, this research aims to develop a novel framework to capture the factors affecting the compaction process in a holistic manner and translate them into relevant decision variables. This framework achieves this objective by integrating simulation and virtual reality technologies. In this framework, simulation is responsible for capturing the affecting factors and generating temporal decision variables, whereas VR virtualizes them and provides high (3D) spatial assessment and awareness. A prototype is developed and tested with ASPARi case studies to demonstrate the feasibility of the framework. It is shown that compared to current planning practices, the integrated model can significantly improve various aspects of planning the construction process, especially by improving awareness among decision-makers concerning the development of more standardized compaction patterns.