Texas Department of Transportation 3D Transverse Profiling System for High-Speed Rut Measurement

Abstract

Pavement rutting is a critical measure of road condition. Severe rutting indicates road structure deformation and exposes drivers to hazards, especially when it holds rainwater. The Pavement Management Information System requires ruts to be measured regularly for pavement condition score calculation. In the past few decades, a number of automated rut-measurement devices have been developed and used for highway speed data collection. However, all these devices exhibit limitations on measuring ground truth in practice. This paper introduces a high-speed true three-dimensional (3D) pavement surface measurement tool that can produce accurate rut data at highway speeds. Network-level data collections were conducted and the results analyzed to evaluate and verify the system.