Topic 4: Pavement

Condition Evaluation
Transportation & Highway
Engineering
Dr. Zhen LENG
Associate Professor
Spring 2022
 Contents
❑ Functional Property Evaluation
❑ Surface Texture and Friction
❑ Roughness
❑ Structural Capacity Evaluation
❑ Thickness
❑ Stiffness

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 Safety
Surface Texture and Friction
Typical Pavement Surface Types

Dense-graded Open-graded Gap-graded

Tined CRCP JRCP Grinded JRCP

 Pavement Surface Macro Texture
Measurement
❑ Static Methods
▪ Sand Patch (ASTM E965)
❑ Dynamic Methods
▪ Vehicle-Mounted Laser Devices

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 Sand Patch Method
❑ A volumetric approach
▪ A known volume of sand is spread
properly on a pavement surface to
form a circle
▪ The diameter of the circle on which
the sand has been spread is
measured

❑ Mean Texture Depth (MTD):

MTD = Volume of Sand / Area of Sand

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Vehicle-Mounted Laser Devices
❑ Measures both
pavement surface
roughness and surface
macro-texture.
❑ Fast and no traffic
interruption
❑ Advanced tool but
expensive

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 Friction
Coefficient of Friction:
m = F/Fw
w
Slip Speed:
s = v–vp= v-w*r r
v
Slip Ratio:
SR = s/v*100% vp
Free-rolling: SR=0 (s=0)
Locked-wheel: SR=1 (s=v)

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 Friction vs. Slip Ratio
1.0
Peak friction

Locked Wheel
Friction

0.5

Critical slip speed

0
10%-20% 50% 100%
Slip ratio
 Friction Measurement Devices
❑ Pendulum Tester
Pavement Ride Quality
Roughness
 Roughness and Smoothness
❑ Roughness:
▪ Deviations of a surface from a true planer surface
with characteristic dimensions that affect ride
quality, vehicle dynamics, dynamic loads, and
drainage
❑ Smoothness:
▪ Lack of roughness, free of bumps and dips that
cause discomfort to traveling public
 Roughness Index
❑ Most commonly used roughness index:
International Roughness Index (IRI),
developed by the World Bank in the 1980s.
❑ It is a filtered ratio of a standard vehicle’s
accumulated suspension motion divided by
the distance traveled by the vehicle during the
measurement.
❑ The commonly recommended units are m/km,
or in/mile (in US).

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IRI Roughness Scale

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 Benefits of Smooth Pavements
❑ Satisfied road users
❑ Decrease in fuel consumption and vehicle
maintenance costs
❑ Pavements that are built smooth remain
smooth over time and may provide a longer
service life
❑ Dynamic loadings are lower on smooth
pavements
 Factors Causing Roughness
❑ Built-in construction irregularities
❑ Poor quality of construction materials and
construction deficiencies (e.g., inadequate
compaction)
❑ Traffic loading
❑ Environmental effects (e.g., frost heave,
shrink and swell of subgrade)
 Road Roughness Measurement
❑ Sliding/ Rolling Straightedge
❑ Inertial Profiler

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Sliding/ Rolling Straightedge
Rolling Straightedge
 Inertial Profiler
First developed by Spangler and Kelly of GM in 1964

Inertial Accelerometer
Reference ?

Speed/ Distance Height Relative

Pick-up to Inertial Reference
 Dynatest Profiler

International Cybernetics
Corporation (ICC)
 Modulus Measurement
& Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD)
 Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD)
❑ FWD measures surface deflections
by a pulse loading to simulate a
vehicular moving load.
❑ The system applies controlled
loading and measures deflections
http://www.dynatest.com/hardware/fwd_hwd.htm

• Several geophones measure

velocity of motion, which is
converted into deflection and built
into deflection basins
• Some uses seismometers which
measure deflection directly

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/ctms/CT_356_3-00.pdf
www.erikuab.com
 FWD Testing Procedures (1)
• At selected location, loading plate and
geophones are seated
• A small seating loading is applied
• The falling weight is applied and the deflections
at different sensor locations are measured

www.ce.umn.edu/~guzina/
 FWD Testing Procedures (2)
A-B: Lift
B-C: Drop

Weight

Geophones
Loading plate
Distance
Deflection

Typical deflection basins

B. B. Guzina and R. H. Osburn (2002)

Deflection Data
Deflection Basins

Smart Road FWD Testing – Section A

Factors Affecting FWD Measurements
❑ Load applied
❑ Pavement type/ condition
❑ Climatic condition
Modulus Backcalculation Using FWD Data
Flowchart

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 Layer Thickness Measurement
& Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)
 GPR System Components
GPS

Data Collection
Unit

Survey vehicle Air-coupled

Ground-coupled
antenna
DMI antenna
Distance Measuring
Instrument
GPR System Working Mechanism

DMI
Antenna DMI SIR-20 Data Collection Unit

Layer 1

Layer 2
Pavement GPR Response (A Scan)

Subgrade
Base
t1 AC

t2
A0

A1

A2
12000
10000
8000
6000
AC Base Subgrade
Amplitude
4000
2000
0
-2000
-4000
-6000
-8000
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Time (ns)
 34

Typical Raw GPR Data: Asphalt Pavement

AC

Base
Subgrade

AC

Base

Subgrade
 35

Typical Raw GPR Data: Asphalt Pavement

AC

Base
Subgrade

AC

Base

Subgrade
 36

Typical Raw GPR Data: Reinforced Concrete

Concrete Rebar
 37

Typical Raw GPR Data: Reinforced Concrete

Concrete Rebar
 Dielectric Constant (εr)
 Measures the material’s Material
Dielectric
ability to polarize in Constant
response to electric field Air 1
 Determines the EM wave Water 81
speed within this material Asphalt Concrete 3-10
Cement Concrete 3-18
EM wave
Limestone 5-9
propagation speed speed of light
c in free space Granite 4-6
v = Dry Sand 3-5
r dielectric constant Saturated Sand 20-30
of the medium
Silts 5-30
Clays 5-40

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 Dielectric Constant Estimation
 Surface Reflection Technique
A0 Ap Amplitude
Dielectric Constant:
2 AC Surface
 A p + Ao  (r,AC dAC) tAC
ε r ,A C = 
A −A 
 p o 
Reflection
amplitude of incident amplitude of GPR wave Base from the metal
GPR wave reflection at pavement plate
surface

Layer Thickness:

Time
Subgrade
vtAC ctAC
d AC = = two-way travel time of GPR
2 2 ε r ,A C signal within AC layer

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 GPR Thickness Calculation Example
30000
For the flexible pavement 25000
(4.99, 25879)
20000
shown in the figure below, 15000

Amplitude
Copper Data
calculate the thickness of 10000
5000
the AC surface based on the 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
GPR data collected from a -5000
-10000
copper plate and the -15000
-20000
pavement. Time (ns)
AC Surface 14000
12000 (4.266, 11400)
10000
Amplitude 8000 Pavement Data
6000
Base 4000
(7.162, 4556)
2000
0
-2000 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
-4000
Subgrade -6000
-8000
Time (ns)