Three-Year Performance of Innovative Preservation Treatments to Address Pre-mature Pavement Roughness

摘要

Alberta Transportation twinned a 27 km portion of Hwy 43:04 east of Grande Prairie in a staged sequence: subgrade construction in 2000; granular base course and first stage asphalt pavement in 2000 or 2001; final stage asphalt pavement in 2003. Within a couple of years of final stage paving, the pavement started to exhibit premature roughness characterized by heaving at low temperature transverse crack locations. AT and EBA, a Tetra Tech Company carried out an extensive forensic investigation in 2008/09 that included an evaluation of profile and IRI data collected over several years, a geotechnical investigation, and a laboratory testing program. This investigation explained the causes of the observed distresses and identified potential rehabilitation strategies. In 2009, several innovative pavement preservation strategies were constructed to improve smoothness and delay more costly major rehabilitation or reconstruction. Pavement profile data was collected during the summer and winter seasons before rehabilitation, immediately following rehabilitation, and during the summer and winters of 2010 through 2012. Based on the performance, the various treatments are ranked in terms of their effectiveness and estimated service lives. These will be used as a design input into a life cycle cost analysis as part of the next rehabilitation design.