Experience Gained Investigating, Acquiring and Operating the First Traffic Speed Deflectometer in Australia

AbstractTo manage a pavement one must know something about its condition. The more you know, the better informed your decisions are. In Australia, road agencies have been utilising automated data collection systems to assess the functional condition of their pavements for the best part of the last two decades. However, during this time, the assessment of structural condition has been limited to manual, slow moving or point-based testing. This has made collection of this data across entire networks unrealistic, even though this information is desirable. Therefore, it is no surprise that Australian road agencies have shown significant interest in the Traffic Speed Deflectometer (TSD), a device they hope can provide the network-level structural information they desire.This paper provides the background leading to the initial Australian TSD trials and how ARRB Group was able to procure a TSD for Australia and New Zealand. It also details the integration of additional data collection modules and how they allow the functional and structural condition of the pavement to be measured at the same time. Finally, the paper documents some of the lessons learnt throughout the TSD's acceptance testing and first 18 months of use on the Australian and New Zealand road networks. During this time, over 60,000 km were surveyed with the TSD