Implementation of Pavement Evaluation Tools

Principal Investigator(s):

Joseph Labuz, Professor, Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering

Co-Investigators:

  • Bojan Guzina, Professor, Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering

Project summary:

Over the past decade significant advances have been made on the quantitative assessment of pavements, an item that has a critical role in both preventive road maintenance and QA/QC of pavement construction. Among the variety of devices used, the Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) have emerged as the most promising tools for in-situ monitoring of subsurface pavement conditions. Despite the progress made on the use of FWD and GPR, these techniques have limitations in engineering practice due to overly simplistic or complex data interpretation, and inherent assumptions when used in a stand-alone fashion.

To elevate nondestructive evaluation of local roads, this study aims to render the FWD/GPR road assessment both accessible to field engineers through a user-friendly Graphical User Interface, and more effective by integrating the complementary nature of GPR and FWD information. For instance, the use of FWD requires prior knowledge of pavement thickness, which can be obtained independently from a GPR scan.

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