Comprehensive evaluation and data analysis of field pavement distress for epoxy asphalt pavement on steel bridge deck

Abstract

Epoxy asphalt mixtures are widely used as the paving layer of long-span steel bridges due to their excellent properties, such as high strength, and resistance to fatigue. However, like any material exposed to environmental factors and traffic loads, epoxy asphalt mixtures may undergo certain changes over time, leading to performance deterioration. At present, the statistical analysis on the in-situ pavement condition of steel bridge paving is insufficient. Therefore, more than 12,000 distress data from various in-service steel bridge deck pavements were collected and analyzed, and the main distress characteristics were also summarized. Using random forest and long short-term memory (LSTM) regression models, the evolution of decay pavement distress was evaluated, and the importance of different variables in distress development was quantified. The key findings include that linear crack, map crack, and patching are the dominant pavement distress, accounting for over 90 % of the pavement layer. The observation of an evident increase in pavement distress development after 9–11 years of service. The cumulative number of equivalent axial loads (CEASLs) and service year exhibit the strongest correlation with distress intensity. The importance calculation results show that service year and CESALs are identified as the most influential factors in distress development on steel bridge decks.