Browsing by Author "Elkins, Gary E."

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    Factors Affecting the Performance of Pavement Preservation Treatments
    Visintine, Beth A.; Hicks, R. Gary; Cheng, DingXin; Elkins, Gary E. (2015-06-04)
    Pavement preservation has become a very important tool box for agencies to maintain their roadway system. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funded the project titled "Factors Affecting the Performance of Pavement Preservation Treatments." The objective of this project was to determine how the uncertainty in the output of a model (such as the performance of a preservation treatment or the costs) can be apportioned to the different sources of uncertainty in the inputs (such as pavement condition, construction quality, quality of materials, traffic, and climate). The project evaluated the use of existing databases to determine the sensitivity of the factors on the performance of pavement preservation treatments. Unfortunately, these databases were determined not to be robust enough to answer the questions posed. An alternate approach was used by surveying experts in the field of pavement preservation treatments. This latter approach proved more successful. The impacts on the effect on performance were evaluated using sensitivity analysis and a life cycle cost (LCC) approach. The major factors that control the performance of many pavement preservation treatments that were considered in this study were: Pretreatment Pavement Condition, Materials Selection and Quality, Construction and Workmanship, Mix and Structural Design, Traffic Level, and Climate during and immediately after Construction. This paper focuses on the results of the sensitivity analysis and life cycle cost analysis which show that the variation from good conditions can have a dramatic effect on the life of the pavement preservation treatments as well as the associated costs to the agencies.
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    A Framework for Developing Specifications and Performing Acceptance Testing of an Inertial Profiler
    Perera, Rohan W.; Elkins, Gary E.; Wiser, Larry J. (2015-05-01)
    State highway agencies (SHAs) collect profile data on their highway network using an inertial profiler, and use this data to compute the International Roughness Index (IRI) of highway segments, which are stored in a pavement management system. SHAs also use inertial profilers to obtain the smoothness of new construction to determine if the specified smoothness level has been achieved. When purchasing a new inertial profiler, a SHA has to first develop a set of specifications for the profiler. These specifications should cover all components associated with the profiling system such as the height sensors, accelerometers, distance measurement instrument, computer system, etc. The specifications should also address additional equipment that can be installed in the profiler, such as a GPS receiver, sensors to record macrotexture data etc., and requirements of the host vehicle on which the profiling system is installed, including safety equipment. The specifications have to address software requirements, and contain an acceptance testing plan, which will describe a test protocol to ensure that the constructed profiler is capable of collecting repeatable and accurate data. The Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program has been collecting profile data at test sections located in the United States and Canada for 25 years. During this time, the program has used four different types of profilers for data collection. The procedures followed in the LTPP program to specify and perform acceptance testing of profilers and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standards that address inertial profilers are used in this paper to describe a framework for developing specifications for an inertial profiler and perform acceptance testing of the profiler.
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    Pavement Remaining Service Interval: A Logical Replacement to Remaining Service Life Concept
    Sivaneswaran, Nadarajah; Visintine, Beth A.; Rada, Gonzalo R.; Elkins, Gary E.; Thyagarajan, Senthilmurugan (2015-06-04)
    The process of providing and managing a pavement network requires a plethora of decisions to be made. At the heart of those decisions is the prediction of future construction events, but many issues exist with the current remaining service life (RSL) terminology that confuse, confound, and complicate proper interpretation, interagency data exchange, and use. The major source of ambiguity with RSL is the use of the term "life" to represent different points in the construction time-line. There could be up to four different types of future construction events on which a RSL definition could be based, depending on the condition of the pavement, and it is impossible for a single number called RSL to properly describe all of these future construction events. The recommended path to consistency involves adopting terminology of time remaining until a defined construction treatment is required. RSL is replaced by "Remaining Service Interval" or "RSI" This terminology has the ability to unify the outcome of different approaches for determining needs by focusing on when and what treatments are needed, and the service interruption created. This paper explains the RSI concept and outlines the validation efforts using State Highway Agencies and the Pavement Health Track analysis tool at the national level. It also details how RSI can contribute to the requirements of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) legislation.