Pavement management: Capturing surface treatment effectiveness

Acquiring detailed knowledge of surface treatments effectiveness is required to improve performance-based decisions for allocating resources to preserve and maintain pavements on any road network. Measurement of treatment effectiveness is a complex task that requires historical records of treatments with observations of before and after performance trends. Lack of data is often an obstacle that impedes development and incorporation of surface maintenance treatments into pavement management. This paper analyzes the effect of surface treatments on asphalt paved arterial roads for several control sections of New Brunswick. The method uses a Transition Probability Matrix to capture main effects by mapping mean trends of surface improvement and pavement structure decay. It was found that surface treatments have an immediate effect reducing the rate of loss of structural capacity. Pavements with international roughness index (IRI) smaller than 1.4 m/km did not seem to benefit from surface treatments. Those with IRI higher than 1.66 m/km gained from 6 to 8 years of additional life. Reset value for surface treatments fall between 1.18 and 1.29 m/km. This paper aims to serve to practitioners seeking to capture and incorporate effectiveness of surface treatments (i.e., crack-sealing) into Pavement Management.