Experimental Estimation of the Relative Deterioration of Surface Maintenance Treatments

Abstract

The performance of Australia’s unbound granular pavements with a wearing surface of stone aggregate embedded in a thin bituminous binder seal is highly dependent on maintaining a serviceable surface for the road users. Experimental pavement deterioration data gathered by means of accelerated load testing (ALT) was used to estimate relative performance factors for cumulative rutting and roughness deterioration for various surface maintenance treatments. The ALT experiments were on various surface treatments over separate test pavements undertaken in an enclosure to control the environment, which was either dry or continuously wet. The experimental deterioration data was also used to establish the limit of gradual pavement deterioration prior to the onset of rapid deterioration. The relative performance factors can be applied to the observed deterioration of given surface treatments to develop network level road deterioration (RD) models that predict the influence of various surface treatments on deterioration. Several long term pavement performance studies, including a study directed specifically at maintenance treatments, have collected observational data for the purpose of network level RD model development.