Development of Combined Pavement Condition Prediction Model for Flexible Pavements

Prashant Kumar Azad, S.S. Jain, M. Parida, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Yogesh U. Shah, Centre for Transportation Systems, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.

Introduction

In any country, road network is the backbone of national development. India has about 4.3 million kilometer of road network which is one of the largest network in the world. This road network is carrying 85% of passenger and 65% of freight traffic. This large road network requires a huge amount to keep road network in good condition for passenger comfort and to minimize the loss in Vehicle Operating Cost. But, in case of National Highway, funds allocated for maintenance is only 60% of its requirement. Hence it becomes necessary that the prioritization of the road sector must be done on the basis of prediction of pavement performance so that requirement of fund may be projected well in advance and the available fund be utilized properly.

1. Carrying out the pavement performance for flexible pavement which will be useful in developing pavement performance models.
2. Develop Combined Pavement Condition Prediction Index (CPCI) for flexible pavement.
3. Develop correlation between CPCI and age.

Methodology

In order to achieve the objective proposed in this study three national highway and one state highway section of hilly region in Uttarakhand, India has been selected. The required data of pavement condition was collected after conducting the pavement condition survey of the selected sections. Figure 1 shows the principal stage of the methodology.

Field Data Collection

The study requires collection of data which directly or indirectly meet the requirements of the pavement performance model development system and suggestion of maintenance alternatives suitable for each terrain conditions.

The following data has been collected for the present study.

• Pavement history data
• Road inventory data
• Pavement condition data

Pavement History Data

The pavement history data includes the following details

• Year of original construction and the specifications adopted
• Crust thickness of each pavement layer
• Maintenance inputs and the norms adopted
• Year of strengthening and its specification
• Year and specifications of last renewal course