Pavement Evaluation and Pavement Maintenance

IN T R O D U C T IO N T he In d iana D epartm ent of Highways has em barked upon es­ tab lish ing a Pavem ent M anagem ent System (PMS). As a p a rt of this, the Jo in t H ighway R esearch Project has had an on-going research p ro ­ ject for the past several years dealing with m ethods of m easuring pave­ m ent condition in Ind iana . Research at P urdue on the use of roughness m easuring devices dates back to the m id-1950’s when the first R oughom eter was co n ­ struc ted for JH R P . This instrum ent was used for m any years for re ­ search by the In d iana H ighway B ureau of M aterials an d Tests. R e­ search was carried out at P urdue in the 1960’s u n der con tract with the H ighway R esearch Board on com parison of m ethods of m easuring pave­ m ent roughness. T h e First In te rna tiona l Conference on use of Roadm eters was held at P urdue University on A pril 18-20, 1972. Papers from this conference were published by the H ighway Research B oard in Special R eport 133 en titled “Pavem ent Evaluation Using R oadm eters.” Shortly after this R oadm eter Conference, the In d iana State H igh ­ way Com mission purchased a R oadm eter. T his in strum ent is sta tioned at the Research and T ra in in g C enter and was used for research p u r ­ poses un til abou t m id -1975 when it was p u t to use evaluating pavem ents on a statew ide basis. In 1972 the Jo in t H ighway R esearch Project sta rted an extensive research project for the state highw ay com m ission on perform ance of continuously reinforced concrete pavem ents. As a p a rt of this research, deflection m easurem ents were m ade in o rder to evaluate critical deflec­ tions of this type of pavem ent. A D ynaflect was ob ta ined which was also sta tioned at the R esearch and T ra in in g C enter. T he two instrum ents m entioned above, the R oadm eter and the Dynaflect, have wide use for m easuring pavem ent condition and evalua­ tion of pavem ents. As a p a rt of the activities of the Jo in t Highway R esearch Project, research has been carried out for the past several years on these instrum ents, and m ethods have been established for their use as rou tine evaluation tools.