Examination of roughness of highway pavements in New Brunswick
Loading...
Date
1991
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of New Brunswick
Abstract
The roughness of highway pavements in New Brunswick are a
major concern to road users. The impact of road roughness on
vehicle operating cost must be reduced to lower the total cost of the
road mode. To alleviate road user costs investments in the
construction and maintainance of pavements must be increased to
control th eproblem of rough roads getting rougher faster.
The New Brunswick Department of Transportation (NBDOT) has
purchased road roughness monitoring equipment to set higher
standards for pavement construction procedures. Therefore factors
that directly affet the rate of deterioration of a pavement such as
traffic, environmental and pavement thickness are examined.
The report includes a fairly in depth description and operation
of the equipment that NBDOT has employed in monitoring road
roughness.
The study involved a comparative analysis of current Riding
Comfort Index (RCI) data with historical RCI data. The data were
compiled from road life diagrams and the analysis provided
roughness rates that were categorized corresponding to volumes of
traffic and geographical locations.
The factors such as pavement layer thickness and traffic
loadings were not available to determine the deterioration of
highway pavements from construction roughness.
The results of the study indicate the importance of maintaining
a complete monitoring program of highway roughness, construction
records, and traffic loadings.