Pavement Evaluation

Prof. dr. ir. Andr A.A. Molenaar

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Vermelding onderdeel organisatie

Introduction

Pavement evaluation is not a thing in itself. It is part of a pavement management system used for optimal use of available resources.

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Introduction
Road users demand a certain level of service in terms of:

- safety (geometric design, skid resistance), - driving comfort (evenness, noise in the car), - appearance of the road, - noise and air pollution, - vehicle operating costs. Road authorities are responsible for keeping the road and the pavement in such a condition that the user demands are fulfilled. Users needs must be translated in technical terms. The question is when and where should maintenance be applied and what should be done.
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Why a Pavement Management System (PMS)

To arrive to an optimal use of scarce resources such that a safe, comfortable and fast transportation is guaranteed. We talk about optimal use of resources and we talk about an optimal condition.

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What should a PMS do

Where should we apply maintenance. What type of maintenance activity should be taken. When should the maintenance activity be done. Highest Effect / Cost ratio.

Where - What - When

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Two basic optimization schemes

Minimize costs but keep condition above certain minimum level. Maximize performance but keep budget below a certain level.

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Objective: Minimize (costs) Constraint: min. acceptance level

condition

minimum acceptance level

time

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Example Min (costs)

Developing countries with limited budgets. Be sure that budgets are there when needed!

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Serviceability is related to roughness

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Serviceability is related to roughness

vehicle operating costs

roughness

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Objective: Maximize (performance) Constraint: costs

condition

Max(area under performance curve)

minimum acceptance level

time
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Example Max (performance)

Very busy highway where maintenance works cause large traffic delays. Typical for countries like the Netherlands.

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Important issues

Maintenance is not only needed for structural reasons. Maintenance because of Structural AND Functional reasons. Functional maintenance is directly related to needs of road user. Recognise needs on NETWORK and needs on PROJECT level.

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Pavement deterioration

Pavements deteriorate in time - cracking - permanent deformation - roughness - skid resistance - surface damage raveling bleeding potholes
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Maintenance strategies
Condition dependent maintenance

Condition
Variation is large and end of life is difficult to predict

?
Minimum acceptance level

Time
Frequency distribution of maintenance moments
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Maintenance strategies
Usage dependent maintenance, repair things after a certain

number of hours, is only possible if service life can be predicted and variation in service life is small. Unfortunately pavement life is very difficult to predict and variation in pavement life is substantial. Therefore condition dependent maintenance is the way to go for pavements and condition monitoring is a very important issue. So measure condition, determine what is wrong and design maintenance strategy. This is what we call pavement evaluation and rehabilitation. Usage dependent maintenance only possible if we go to prefabricated products?
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Mismatch between legislators/users and technicians

Technicians like to discuss things like cracks, ruts, crack

propagation, polymer modified mixtures, plasticity index etc, but they should realise that legislators and users dont talk about pavements in those terms!! They even dont understand what we mean!!! It is therefore of vital importance that we as technicians make a clear translation of the users (legislators) needs in the technical things we are talking about and vice versa.

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Network and project level pavement evaluation

Assessing the condition of and determining the needed

maintenance for an entire road network is an enormous task. Therefore it is divided in tasks on network and project level. Types of questions asked, information needed and answers to be given are different between network and project level. Network level is of importance for legislative level, network and project level is of importance for administrative/management level and technical level.
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Network level
Questions asked:

- do you really need this amount of money, - what is the effect of providing more money on pavement condition and will users complaints decrease, - what is effect of a lower budget, - what will happen if we defer maintenance or lower the standards. Network level: large amount of data should be collected and evaluated in a short period of time. High speed measuring techniques are necessary. To answer the questions it is not needed to monitor entire network. Entire network should be monitored if one wants to know where the unsatisfactory spots are.
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Project level

Questions asked:

- what is going on with that pavement, - what do we need to do, - how much does it costs and how should the maintenance contract look like. Project level: quality of the data is of importance.

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Measurements on network level

About a decade ago the only measurements that could be

performed at an acceptable high speed level were: - ride measurements, - skid resistance measurements. Nowadays we can measure almost anything at high speed. - road profile (e.g. laser) , - texture (laser), - thickness (radar), - deflection (laser), - skid resistance (contact measurement), - noise (sound). Unfortunately these techniques are not always applicable (costs, availability of equipment and skills, etc).
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Measurements on project level

Deflection measurements.

Material testing (lab. Investigations). High speed measurement techniques not always have an accuracy that is good enough for project level.

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Pavement damage is due to a lot of factors

Traffic

Climate Subsoil Interaction between damage types; in our mechanistic designs we tend to treat various damage types as individual parameters. This is a wrong approach!

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Remaining part of presentation

Since this is a course on structural pavement design issues, we will only discuss structural evaluation in the remainder of this presentation. In this lecture we deal primarily with pavements consisting of thick layers. In the next lecture we will deal with thin pavement structures.

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Structural evaluation

Visual condition surveys Deflection measurements Material evaluation

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Visual condition survey

Use your eyes! Make a careful an unbiased assessment of the pavement condition and try to get an idea about the causes for the observed damage! This also helps you in deciding what type of measurements and analyses should be done additionally.

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Deflection measurements

By means of these measurements one determines the bending stiffness of the pavement and loss of bending stiffness.

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Fatigue tests

4 p bending

2 p bending

tension

itt

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Constant force
force

bending

Nfail = nr of load rep. to failure

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Why does bending increase

= F L3 / 48 EI I = b h3 / 12 Due to development of damage, E might decrease (micro damage) or h (real crack). Therefore will increase. This will also happen in a pavement.

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Deflections in and between wheel paths

between

in
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Deflection measurement devices

Benkelman beam Deflectograph Falling weight deflectometer

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Benkelman beam

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Example of pavement evaluation chart

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Principle of overlay design chart

Deflection after overlay Overlay thickness

Deflection before overlay

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Deflectograph

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Deflectograph

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Falling weight deflectometer

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Principle of the falling weight deflectometer

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Surface curvature index (SCI) gives information about pavement structure

d0

dr SCI = d0 - dr r, usually r = 300 or 600 mm

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Deflection at large distance gives information about subgrade

r

dr r = 1800 or 2500 mm

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Analysing deflection data; variation of SCI along a section

Results Deflection Survey
1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 Distance [km]
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SCI600 = d0-d600 [micrometer]

SCI

Cumulative sum plot to determine homogeneous sub-sections

Cumsum plot
2000 1500 SCI cumsum value

1000
Ser ies1

500

0 0 -500 distance
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0,5

1,5

2,5

E values can be calculated if you know thickness (h) and deflections

E=? h = known E=? h = known E=?

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Pavement Evaluation Traditional Approach

Only peak values of load and deflections are used. Linear elastic theory is applied. Modulus of pavement layers is back calculated. Stresses and strains due to design load are calculated. Material characteristics are estimated. Remaining life is calculated. Overlay design.
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Drawbacks
Spot analysis. How useful is information on moduli if thickness shows large amount of variation. Variability is hardly taken into account. How do we define end of pavement life. How do we estimate material characteristics. Deflection measurements only provide information on bending stiffness and not on pavement life.

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Thin layers are difficult to analyse

Influence Stiffness Top Layer on Deflection Profile (h2 = 0.25 m, E2 = 300 MPa, E3 = 100 MPa)
900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 geophone position [m]
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deflection [micrometer]

0.2 m asphalt E = 6000 MPa 0.2 m asphalt E = 3000 MPa 0.05 m asphalt E = 6000 MPa 0.05 m asphalt E = 3000 MPa

Evaluation deflection data

Determine surface modulus plot. Back calculate layer stiffness moduli. Automatic back caluation procedures do not always give correct answers. Especially structures with thin top layers and stiff base courses as well as sandwich type structures give problems.

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Spreading of fwd load through structure

geophones

geophone a gives information on subgrade stiffness while geophone b gives info on stiffness of entire structure
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Boussinesqs theory
E = . a2 . (1 - 2) / dr . R E = 2 . . a . (1 - 2) / do Where: E a dr do
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= elastic modulus, = radius of loading plate, = Poissons ratio, = contact pressure under loading plate, = deflection at distance r, = maximum deflection.
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Surface modulus plot

Surface Modulus Plots Sections I and II OECD Force
600 Surface Modulus [MPa] 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 500 1000 Equivalent Depth [mm] 1500 2000
Section I Section II

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Deterioration shows as decrease in asphalt modulus

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Strain predictions

It can be shown that x = 6 ( 1 - ) M / E h2 = h / 2 Rx 1 / Rx SCI 1 / Rx

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Strain Predictions
For asphalt pavements, simple relations have been developed to estimate strain levels in bound layers and subgrade from SCI. log = c + d log SCI

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Life Prediction
log N = a - b log log = c + d log SCI so log N = a - bc - bd log SCI This clearly indicates that empirical procedures that relate deflection directly to nr. of load repetitions must have hidden material characteristics. These are not unique but vary from location to location and need to be known.
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Deflection tests to measure crack activity

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Deflection tests to measure crack activity

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Principles of overlay design on cracked pavement

K1 K2 Eeff

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Conclusions
FWD measurements very useful tool to analyse: - layer moduli, - strain levels in pavements, - remaining life, - load transfer near cracks. Visual condition surveys and material testing should be conducted in order to be able to make proper overlay and rehabilitation designs.

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Thank you for your attention

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