Sensitivity of road unevenness indicators to short wavelength distresses in Portland cement concrete surfaces

Abstract

This paper examined the sensitivity of 20 road unevenness indicators (RUIs) for local discontinuities (various distresses, joints, joint and surface defects, cracks, spalls, other road features, humps, dips, etc.) of a maximum length of 20 cm in Portland cement concrete pavements. Approximately, 5500 road records totalling 530 km from the Long-Term Pavement Performance programme were processed. Raw profiles were separated into random and distress components using a median filtering method. The median filter was set to identify distress of a maximum length of 20 cm and with a minimal height of 3 mm. Over 26,000 distresses and their dimensions were identified. Raw longitudinal road profiles were compared with the separated pure random components. The most sensitive indicators of distresses were road elevation spectrum parameters in whole- and short-wave bands, the Profile Index and the road elevation root mean square (RMS) value in the short-wave band. Negligible sensitivity was observed for the International Roughness Index, road elevation RMS values and spectrum parameters in long- and medium-wave bands. The influence of road data pre-processing on the results was estimated.

Keywords:

• Longitudinal road profile
• road roughness
• distress
• crack
• joint
• slab
• International Roughness Index (IRI)
• Profilograph Index (PrI)
• straightedge
• ride number (RN)
• power spectral density (PSD)

Acknowledgements

The help of the LTPP InfoPave Support Team with providing of SPS profiles data is highly appreciated.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VEGA Grant Agency of Slovak Academy of Sciences [grant number 2/0089/16].