Materials Testing Manual

Part 1: Introduction
1 Scope
The Materials Testing Manual (MTM) is published to assist the Department of Transport and Main
Roads in the design, construction and maintenance of the state road network.

The 3rd Edition of the MTM was published in 1978 and has been amended regularly since the initial
publication. Since June 2010 the manual has been available in electronic form only.

To reduce costs for industry, the manual contains a “Table of Equivalencies” so that testing
laboratories will no longer need to obtain separate NATA accreditations for identical test methods.
The methods published in the MTM are also referenced in the following departmental publications:
• Pavement Design Manual

• Pavement Rehabilitation Manual

• Technical Specifications

• Western Queensland Best Practice Guidelines

2 Content
The manual contains eleven parts as follows:

a) Part 1 - Introduction

b) Part 2 - General

c) Part 3 - Sampling

d) Part 4 – Soils, Crushed Rock and Stabilised Materials

e) Part 5 - Geotechnical, Environmental, Rock

f) Part 6 - Aggregates

g) Part 7 – Asphalt

h) Part 8 - Bituminous materials

i) Part 9 – Concrete

j) Part 10 – Chemical

k) Part 11 - Pavements

3 Using other standards

The Transport and Main Roads technical specifications require that the testing of all work carried out
within a contract be undertaken in accordance with the MTM. These methods are prefixed with the
letter “Q”.

The original issue of the manual contained only full text methods published by the then Department of
Main Roads. Since the early 1980s the MTM has referred to other methods and standards, initially for
concrete testing but expanding to include the testing of soils, aggregates, asphalt and other
bituminous materials.

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Materials Testing Manual: Introduction

The current manual contains the following:

• methods that directly reference existing test methods (for example, Australian Standards,
Austroads)

• methods that reference other test methods but include some mandatory variations

• full text methods either developed in-house or based on existing test methods.

4 Safety
This manual does not attempt to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is
the responsibility of the user of this manual to establish appropriate occupational health and safety
practices that meet statutory regulations.

5 Approved methods (table of equivalencies)

A list of methods that are approved as replacements for Transport and Main Roads methods are
shown in Table 1.

Table 1 - Approved replacement methods

TMR method Equivalent TMR method Equivalent

Q116A AS 5101.3.2 Q334 AG:PT/T131
Q124 AS 1289.3.7.1 Q334 AS 2341.18
Q181A AS 1289.6.2.2 Q336 AS 2341.3
Q190 ASTM D6244 Q476 AS 1478.2
Q212A AS 1141.50 Q705 AG:PT/T250
Q306D AS 2891.9.3 Q706 AG:PT/T251
Q313 AG:PT/T236

TMR - Transport and Main Roads

AS - Australian Standard
AG:PT/ - Austroads
ASTM - American Society for the Testing of Materials

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