Changes in Key Flexible Pavement Condition Measurements for Typical Warranty Periods

Abstract

The Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) DataPave database was used to extract pavement condition and limited structural information along with traffic data for 191 randomly selected new asphalt pavement sections from across the country. Pavement performance data were limited to the collection of longitudinal cracking in the wheelpaths, fatigue cracking, and transverse cracking. Rather than models for the type and extent of pavement distresses with age, a simplified process that coded the database for the first occurrence of a given distress in each of the 191 new test sections was developed. This approach was used to determine the percentage of pavements exhibiting a given type of distress at 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years. The results indicate the following: at 3 years, no longitudinal, fatigue, or transverse cracking is present; at 5 years, less than 2% of the sections experienced longitudinal (wheelpath), fatigue, or transverse cracking; at 7 years, between 3% and 6% of the sections exhibited longitudinal, fatigue, or thermal cracking; at 15 years, approximately 50% of sections showed signs of cracking distresses; at 20 years, between 60% and 70% of the sections contained excessive cracking.