Performance Study of Flexible Pavements: A Sample Study

Abstract

Pavements are major assets of highway infrastructure. In India, mostly the flexible pavements deteriorate faster than expected design life. Hence,there is a great need for pavement performance study. In this thesis, an attempt is made to study performance on pavements on sample basis. Performance indicators considered are International Roughness Index, Structural Number, traffic in terms of Equivalent single axle loads, Pavement Condition Index, and Characteristic deflection from Benkelman Beam test. In total, four sections are chosen to study the pavement performances. At first, merlin equations are calibrated and validated with respect to auto-level for calculating IRI, and then structural number is obtained with respect to layer coefficients and corresponding thicknesses of pavement layers. Rebound deflection is calculated from Benkelman. Traffic is calculated for three days and based on this; ESAL is obtained at all sections. Visual observations with simple measurements have been done to study pavement surface conditions to assess Pavement Condition Indices of corresponding sections at a particular point of time. Finally simple modelling has been done to relate functional performance with structural performance of sample pavement sections considered.