Investigation of Development of Pavement Roughness

1998Final Report June 1995 - August 1997PDFTech ReportFHWA-RD-97-147DTFH61-95-C-00124Asphalt pavementsConcrete pavementsFlexible pavementsPavementsProfilometersUnited StatesUnited States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Engineering Research and DevelopmentPerera, R. W.Byrum, C.Kohn, S. D.Soil and Materials Engineers, Inc.United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Engineering and Highway Operations R&DTurner-Fairbank Highway Research CenterUS Transportation CollectionThe Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program was designed as a 20-year study of pavement performance. The LTPP program consists of two programs: (1) General Pavement Studies (GPS) that use in-service test sections in either their original design phase or in their first overlay phase and (2) Specific Pavement Studies (SPS) that investigate the effect of specific design features on pavement performance. A major data collection effort at these test sections is the collection of longitudinal profile data along the wheel paths, which is performed annually. This report describes an investigation that was carried out to study the change in roughness at the test sections using the profile data. At the time this analysis was carried out, profile data were generally available for 4 years in the database. This report describes: (1) investigation of times sequence roughness data collected at GPS test sections to study trends in development of roughness, (2) comparison between International Roughness Index and Ride Number, (3) development of models to predict changes in roughness, (4) investigation of roughness characteristics of new flexible and rigid pavements built for the SPS program, (5) investigation of roughness characteristics of flexible and rigid pavements that were subjected to different rehabilitation strategies under the SPS program, and (6) recommendations for quality assurance and profiling frequency for the test sections.90