Abstract
Pavement deflection has been used widely as a nondestructive technique to evaluate the structural capacity of pavements at both network and project levels. Various transportation agencies use several evaluation methods to evaluate the integrity of the pavement layers. Most of these up-to-date developed indices are exclusively based on either central deflections or one deflection point along FWD deflection bowl. However, no standardized method that utilizes the full FWD deflection bowl is available. This study aims to introduce new comprehensive pavement layer deflection and deflection bowl area parameters that are based on the entire FWD deflection bowl rather than one single deflection point and to relate the developed parameters to the field measured distress data. Thirty-five different pavement sections in the State of Texas were utilized in the study. Two comprehensive deflection parameters and a ranking scale were developed that may be utilized for the overall pavement structural condition evaluation.
Highlights
The results showed that the Structural Condition Index (SCI) was very sensitive to the pavement deterioration, based on a sensitivity analysis conducted on the TxDOT pavement management systems (PMS) data
There are few simple procedures employed by agencies to identify structurally weak pavement sections based on Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) data, none of them utilizing the full deflection bowl
All of the newly developed parameters were based on the entire extent of the deflection bowl to overcome the limitations in the previously developed parameters, and to produce more robust parameters capable in capturing the pavement structural conditions of the entire pavement structure
Summary
Pavement deflection has been widely utilized as a nondestructive technique to evaluate the structural capacity of pavement structures at both the network and project levels. The FWD is the main deflection-measuring device in the U.S [3] that has been widely used as a reliable tool to measure pavement surface deflection bowl. With the development of multilayer elastic analysis software along with the development of accelerated test tracks, the measured deflection bowl was utilized to backcalculate layer moduli, and several parameters were derived to evaluate the structural condition of pavement structures. The backcalculation technique is not feasible to conduct at the network level due to its inability to produce a simple measure of the structural integrity of pavement and, its use is limited to project level evaluation
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