Computerized pavement management for concrete pavements

Abstract

Maintenance and rehabilitation of a pavement network have not always warranted much scrutiny by the agencies who were responsible for them. New construction has always been on the forefront of analysis by the agencies. Now that particular agencies have neared the peak of new construction, their concerns are shifting from new construction to maintenance of their present pavement network within funding limitations. In order to fulfil this goal it is in the best interest of the agencies to implement a program that will assist decision makers in defining optimum strategies for maintaining pavements in a serviceable condition over a given period of time. These pavement analysis programs are known as Pavement Management Systems (PMS). The program developed in this report is for concrete roads and has been named ROAD.CON. The difficulty in developing such a system, compared to the standard asphalt road PMS, is that each slab has to be treated as if it were a section. The problem of keeping a detailed record of the slabs is overcome by producing base drawings with slabs represented by identification numbers. The program is broken down into three levels. The first level is the assessing of each slab and section on a condition index basis. From the condition index the second level determines the needs of the individual slabs and sections. The third level determines the strategy which will be applied to the section or slab. ROAD.CON utilizes the LOTUS 1-2-3 Release 4.1 software and is recommended for use on a 386 processor or better with at least 8MB of RAM. ROAD.CON can be loaded into a laptop for ease of use in the field by the inspection personnel. ROAD.CON allows the user or agency to obtain information which may be beneficial in determining the budget reguirements and future needs of the network.