Pavement

The Elastometer is the key testing instrument for PMB specifications in Australia. The Elastometer operating software and data acquisition system were developed in the 1980s, originally to run under DOS and later upgraded to Windows 3.1. This limited the functionality of the Elastometer and users had requested that modifications be made to enable the software and hardware to operate with modern PC operating systems. The current method of manufacturing Elastometers was also unsustainable as it relied on the expertise of a single individual. Thus, an alternative and sustainable Elastometer manufacturing system needed to be established. The parts and assembly instructions were transferred to computer assisted drawings (CAD) which should facilitate the manufacture of future Elastometers by an engineering fabricator. This report describes the upgrade of the Elastometer software and data acquisition system. A series of correlation tests were carried out to confirm the functionality of the new system. The inter-device correlation trials produced very comparable results indicating that the new system is working satisfactorily.