Role of Preventive Treatments in Low-Volume Road Maintenance Program: Full-Scale Case Study

Abstract

The lack of information on reliable life-extending benefit for pavement preservation treatments led the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) to conduct a preservation study applying preservation treatments on a low-volume county road in Auburn, Alabama, which began in 2012. The primary objective of the study is to develop performance models for preservation treatments to be used in pavement management systems. Performance measures including rutting, cracking, and roughness are collected on a regular basis to the present date. Among all the collected measures, only cracking shows an upward trend and therefore was used in this study as the performance index for the analysis. The present study aims to implement a semi-parametric survival analysis technique to assess the effectiveness of treatments used, and to investigate associated risk factors. The study confirms that preservation strategies significantly decrease the risk of failure when compared with a “do-nothing” scenario. It was found that initial condition, treatment family, recycled material usage, and crack sealing application have a significant impact on future deterioration. It is also concluded that survival analysis techniques are useful tools in aiding decision makers in the selection of proper treatment choices.