[Retracted] An Educational Web‐Based Expert System for Novice Highway Technology in Flexible Pavement Maintenance

Abstract

Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected students’ attendance in the universities and causes universities to close down in more than 190 countries. On the other hand, novice engineers studied only a few lectures related to highway engineering. Their lectures have included very little knowledge about asphalt pavement construction as highway engineering consists of many areas that are not studied in detail during their studying years subject to their traditional education. Due to all mentioned, a new drive to promote online learning paves the way to evaluate our future approach to curriculum development and delivery of educational materials for engineering courses. However, experts can offer solutions to these problems using their past experience. Hence, a system that allows experts to share their experience with other engineers after completing a project is needed. Nevertheless, the web-based expert system for maintaining flexible pavement problems in tropical regions (ESTAMPSYS) designed in this study is a novel concept. Prior to developing this system, the need for such a system was determined through literature review and validated through a questionnaire survey. Experts were interviewed, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to construct the knowledge base of the system. Knowledge was presented as rules and coded in software through PHP programming. Web pages that support the user interface were designed using a framework that consists of CSS, HTML, and J-Query. Furthermore, the system was tested by an array of users engaged in highway engineering, namely, experts, teaching experts, novice engineers, and students. The mean values of the overall system evaluation performed by 20 users using a five-point Likert scale were 4, 4.5, 3.75, 4.25, 5, 4, and 3.5. Expert and user satisfaction prove the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Perspective of Life-Cycle Cost Analysis and Risk Assessment for Airport Pavement in Delaying Preventive Maintenance

“…Crack sealing is a maintenance activity that seals cracks with rubberized bituminous material [33]. It includes the routing of cracks, cleaning the routed surface, and applying the sealant on them.…”

Study Effects of Gradation and Material Thermal Property of Chip Seal Aggregates in Roller Concrete Pavement Crack Healing by Image Processing and RMS

“…In the road pavement management system, the proper repair and maintenance of cracks extend the pavement's life by a quantitatively significant amount. This procedure prevents water penetration into the bottom layers, preserving the pavement's carrying capacity and preventing its surface from deteriorating [13]. One of the main failures in rigid pavements is cracks; hence, some studies have been performed on cracking concrete pavement, including RCC pavement and its repair [14,15].…”

Performance Comparison of 45° and 90° Herringboned Permeable Interlocking Concrete Pavement

“…Only 1.8 percent of all pavers sold in Canada are permeable, while 4.8 percent of all pavers sold in America are permeable [15]. Because customers are worried about winter performance and long-term operating and maintenance expenses, there has been a sluggish increase in the adoption of permeable pavements [16,17]. In order to achieve the structural and hydrologic goals of the design of permeable pavements, the subgrade may be covered with geosynthetics such as geotextiles, geogrids, or geomembranes.…”