Characterization of road surface by means of laser scanner technologies

The monitoring of pavement distress takes a key role with respect to the functionality of a road structure, which is necessary to schedule maintenance works, optimizing the available resources. The identification, classification and quantification of different typology of distress involve complex practical activities and data processing that are sometimes inefficient and risky since interfere with road traffic. Our work focuses on the three-dimensional reconstruction of the paved surface making use of innovative technologies of surveying and data computation for the purpose of vehicle dynamics simulation. With the evolving LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technologies, including static and mobile laser scanners, it is possible to obtain very dense point clouds. The experimentation concerns a road segment whose surface has been surveyed by means of a static Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) and a Mobile Laser System (MLS) to analyze their performances and compare the results in a test case. These data were used to generate a few 3D geometrical models of the road surface. The IRI (International roughness Index) was computed on both the TLS and MLS surface, this latter measured at different acquisition speed. In order to evaluate road safety and comfort, the DEM (Digital Elevation Model) was imported in a vehicle dynamics simulation software that predicts the performance of vehicles in response to driver’s controls