Indiana Pavement Preservation Program

Abstract

State highway agencies are facing immense pressure to maintain roads at acceptable levels amidst the challenging financial and economic situations. In recent years, pavement preservation has been sought as a potential alternative for managing the pavement assets, believing that it could provide a cost-effective solution in maintaining infrastructural conditions and meeting user expectations.While the concept of pavement preservation is has been established at the project level, there is still a significant gap in implementing elements of pavement preservation at the network level, especially within the pavement management system. Recognizing the need to integrate both project and network level pavement preservation into a coherent pavement management structure, this research study attempts to develop a framework for pavement preservation implementation within the state of Indiana. Several elements related to integrating pavement preservation in a pavement management framework are studied: (i) determining triggers for pavement preservation treatments for use in a PMS, (ii) developing performance models for preservation treatments, (iii) developing a remaining service life approach for strategy comparison at the project level, and (iv) developing a pavement preservation framework that integrates the districts and the central office of a state highway agency. These elements when properly resolved can allow a truly comprehensive pavement management system with consideration to preservation concepts within the Indiana Department of Transportation. FindingsThe first part of the report explores the development of thresholds that allow the "triggering" of preservation and rehabilitation treatments within a pavement management system. Two different procedures to develop intervention levels for pavement preservation treatments are studied. The first procedure involves using historical decisions made by an agency to determine treatment intervention levels, while the second procedure seeks expert opinions to develop relevant treatment decision matrices. Based on the findings presented in the report, distress-based decision matrices are found to be more desirable, primarily because it can be easily adopted for new and innovative pavement materials and preservation treatments.The second part of the report develop pavement performance models (both long term pavement performance and short term performance jumps) for various asphalt and PCC preservation treatments. Costs for preservation treatments are also identified. These models can be used in a pavement management system to allow network level planning and programming of pavement activities.A remaining service life approach for pavement preservation strategy selection is developed to evaluate competing pavement strategies at the project level. An illustration is presented in report to demonstrate the application of remaining service life in project level pavement management. It is found in the report that pavement preservation can be a costeffective solution to preserve our ...

Pavement Preservation Practices in Cold Regions

“…INDOT also developed short and long term performance models for the following pavement preservation treatments: crack seal, patching, microsurfacing and thin overlay. These can be found in Ong et al (2010). Chan et al (2010) list the following expected pavement extension lives for pavement preservation treatments in Ontario: crack sealing = 3 years, slurry seal = 3 to 5 years, microsurfacing = 7 to 9 years, chip seal = 4 to 6 years, hot in-place recycling (HIR; heated surface is milled down to 40 -50 mm, scarified material is rejuvenated and reprofiled) = 10 to 12 years similar to an HMA overlay.…”

“…Service life and cost of treatments in Ontario (adapted from Wei and Tighe 2004)Ong et al (2010) have developed long term pavement performance models for existing pavements as part of INDOT's pavement preservation program. The models for flexible pavements were developed for functional performance indicators such as pavement roughness and rut depth using regression analysis.…”

Crack Sealing and Filling: Best Practices

“…Also, Ong et al (2010) evaluated short-and long-term effectiveness of pavement preservation treatments in Indiana using the pavement condition data, traffic data, and work information from the Indiana pavement management system. From the study, it was found that crack sealing provided no significant improvement in International Roughness Index (IRI) of pavements (Ong et al, 2010). However, more recent study from Lu and Tolliver (2012) on short-term effectiveness of pavement treatment in IRI, based on LTPP data, reported that crack sealing application offered a significant pavement performance jump in terms of IRI down to 28 in./mile.…”

“…Another study conducted with Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) data in 2012 on the short-term effectiveness of pavement treatment on the International Roughness Index (IRI) reported that crack sealing application offered a significant jump in pavement performance in terms of IRI down to 28 in./mile (Lu & Tolliver, 2012). However, two Indiana studies found that there were no significant IRI differences between sealed and non-sealed pavements (Fang, Galal, Ward, & Haddock, 2003) and prior to and after the sealing application (Ong, Nantung, & Sinha, 2010). For the effectiveness of routing in crack sealing practice, Masson (1997) found that routing on an asphalt concrete pavement created micro-cracks at the bitumen aggregate interface and within aggregates.…”

Determining the Effectiveness of Asphalt Concrete Overlays on Rigid Pavement Using Discrete-Event Simulation

“…The review of the past literature reveals that pavement deterioration is significantly influenced by climatic and traffic load (see [8] - [15]). Nevertheless, the problem would arise when trying to replicate the fluctuation of these two pavement deterioration factors.…”