Profiling of external deformation in asphalt pavement rutting using image analysis method

The quality of road surface exerts a great influence on the road safety. Characterization of the asphalt surface structure using two-dimensional (2-D) imaging techniques is an economically efficient approach. The present research focused on introducing a more elaborate method of characterization of external structure, and proposing new index to relate and explain rutting performance of asphalt. An algorithm of video and image correlation for profiling the external surface deformation of asphalt pavement rutting is presented. In this paper, the deformation profiles of the rut is presented as one of several significant performance indices of rutting. The deformation profile of rutting is demonstrated using the developed algorithm. The principal component analysis is also utilized to automate the detection of rut sites. It is based on frame correlation to compute the degree of similarity between rut and non-rut sites. The developed algorithm is applied to analyze the video frames of highway sites and obtain simple rut deformation profiles. Moreover, the PCA results demonstrate good profiling to the external surface deformation of asphalt pavement rutting. The proposed deformation image profiler demonstrates the performance of pavement rutting throughout highway sites.