Evaluation of long-term effectiveness of preventive maintenance treatments using LTPP SPS-3 experiment data

Abstract

The present study evaluated the long-term effectiveness of preventive maintenance treatments (PMTs) on pavement performance using the data collected in the Specific Pavement Studies-3 (SPS-3) of the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program. The PMTs included thin overlay, slurry seal, crack seal and chip seal. Pavement performances included roughness, rutting, transverse cracking, longitudinal cracking and alligator cracking. A new framework was established in this study to evaluate pre-treatment pavement condition. Weighted distress was adopted to describe average long-term performance and a new indicator was proposed to characterize average long-term effectiveness increment. Scatterplot analysis, cumulative frequency distribution, average long-term effectiveness increment and pair-samples t-test were conducted to investigate the long-term effectiveness. Results indicate that the results from the four analysis methods are similar, so the proposed new indicator is capable of evaluating the long-term effectiveness of PMTs. Meanwhile, thin overlay and crack seal are the best and worst PMTs on each performance, respectively. In addition, there may be a critical original pavement condition in terms of the long-term effectiveness of PMTs on each performance respectively. The findings in this study may supply guidelines for the implementation of preventive maintenance decision-making.