I 4. Title and Subtitle Assessment of Profiler Performance for Construction Quality Control: Phase I

This report describes a profiler verification experiment that tested the performance of inertial profilers on four pavement sections. The repeatability and reproducibility of profile and the International Roughness Index (IRI) measured by lightweight inertial profilers for construction quality control was of particular interest. The study included six lightweight inertial profilers, three high-speed inertial profilers, two walking-speed profilers, and a rod and level survey. The experiment demonstrated that repeatability of inertial profilers was compromised on the new concrete site with transverse tining, and was inadequate on the new concrete site with longitudinal tining. The experiment also demonstrated that inertial profilers are not able to reproduce profiles sufficiently when the position and severity of localized rough features is of interest. Poor performance on the concrete sites with coarse texture is attributed to the fact that the depth of tining and joints on new concrete are of the same scale as the height of longer wavelength features that are relevant to vehicle response. Two potential solutions to these problems are possible. First, the sensor footprint of profilers could be altered to better represent the behavior of vehicle tires. This could improv