Pavement engineering is a branch of

civil engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

that uses engineering techniques to design and maintain flexible (

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

) and rigid (

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

) pavements. This includes streets and highways and involves knowledge of

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by re ...

hydraulics Hydraulics () is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counterpart of pneumatics, which concer ...

, and material properties. Pavement engineering involves new construction as well as rehabilitation and maintenance of existing pavements. Maintenance often involves using engineering judgment to make maintenance repairs with the highest long-term benefit and lowest cost. The Pavement Condition Index (PCI) is an example of an engineering approach applied to existing pavements. Another example is the use of a falling weight deflectometer (FWD) to non-destructively test existing pavements. Calculation of pavement layer strengths can be performed from the resulting deflection data. The two methods - empirical or mechanistic is used to determine pavement layer thicknesses.

Evaluation of pavement

The evaluation of existing road pavements is done based on 3 factors * Functional surface condition: where all the distresses such as cracks, potholes, rutting and others are analyzed. * Structural condition: which analyzes pavement's structural strength to take loading from trucks. * Roughness: using parameters such as the International Roughness Index to evaluate comfort for drivers.

References

Transportation engineering

Evaluation of pavement

See also

References

Further reading