Yanling NIU

A Development and Application of Pavement Deterioration Model on Route 8 in Hokuriku Region

Teruhiko MARUYAMA

Pavement management systems (PMS) are a set of methods that can assist pavement management engineers in finding cost-effective strategies for providing, evaluating, and maintaining pavements in a serviceable condition. The final objective of the PMS is to give pavement engineers useful information about when, where and what kind of maintenance or rehabilitation work should be applied to the pavements. Pavement deterioration models, which have a great influence on the reliability of final results of the PMS, are used to determine future maintenance needs of pavement sections, budget planning and life-cycle cost analyses.
The purpose of this study is to discuss how to develop the pavement deterioration models and how to apply the pavement deterioration models to pavement management work. National Route 8 in Hokuriku Region is chosen as an object.
Based on the Markov probabilistic theory, using the database of the Hokuriku Region Pavement Management Support System, pavement deterioration models on National Route 8 were developed. The pavement deterioration models depend on pavement structure, pavement base materials, traffic volume and the last pavement maintenance or rehabilitation action applied. The characteristics of the pavement deterioration model are also discussed.
When the pavement deterioration models have once been developed, the next step is to consider applications of the pavement deterioration models to PMS procedures. The needs year is defined as the year in which the maintenance control index (MCI) value falls to 4.0 in this study. The pavement deterioration model is applied to pavement needs year distribution, pavement distress type analyses, pavement maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) cost prediction and pavement M&R work optimization.
Pavement deterioration model applications on PMS procedures are shown and discussed in this study. The necessary budgets of Nagaoka City area and Niigata City area for 12 years are predicted. It can be seen that the budget planning should be different in Nagaoka City area and Niigata City area. One pavement M&R optimization method was discussed in the study. For pavement supervisors, it is necessary to find the most appropriate M&R option to do the M&R work by using the limited budgets. It will be the future research of this study.