In-situ measurement of surface infiltration in flexible pavements

ABSTRACT

The surface pavement infiltration is one of the main routes for the water to enter into a pavement structure. This infiltration must be measured since it produces damage to the pavement surface and the soil layers of the pavement. To measure the surface infiltration rates of pavements, a field infiltrometer was designed and instrumented. Using this equipment, several in-situ tests were conducted on both low and high traffic roads in Mexico. Because most of the water is believed to enter the pavement through the surface cracks, much of the testing is focused on cracked pavement surfaces. Nonetheless, tests were also conducted on uncracked surfaces and on pavements with open-graded asphalt courses to observe the variation of the infiltration rates regarding the type of pavement. To characterise the cracking, a computational program was developed to measure the cracking extension of the testing site using image processing techniques. Lastly, the results of all the in-situ testing were analysed carefully and some remarks about the utility of the equipment are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Infiltration rate
• cracked pavements
• infiltrometers
• cracking measurement
• field testing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the financial support from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (Conacyt) and the Faculty of Civil Engineering, of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).