Good highways are so interwoven with every phase of our daily activities that it is almost impossible to imagine what life would be like without them. Each year in the United States, enormous quantities of construction materials are used for improvements to the public roadway system. Such projects require annually over 590 million tons of aggregates, 11 million tons of bituminous materials, and 19 million tons of cement, as well as vast quantities of steel, lumber, explosives, and petroleum products.
This 8-hour interactive online course is the first half of the eighth course in a series on highway engineering. This course describes some of the physical characteristics and quality control tests for soils, aggregates, bituminous materials, and portland cement. Detailed material specifications and tests for these and other highway construction materials have been published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
