Distress Evolution in Highway Flexible Pavements: A 5-Year Study at the Korea Highway Corporation Test Road

• Published in: Journal of testing and evaluation 2010-01, Vol.38 (1), p.1-10
• Main Author: Seo, Youngguk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0090-3973; 1945-7553
• DOI: 10.1520/JTE102107

In Korea, a 7.7 km-long test road was constructed with an aim to better understand the behavior of pavements and to develop a mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide (MEPDG). This two lane highway consisted of asphalt and concrete pavements that were further divided into diverse sections: 33 asphalt sections and 25 concrete sections. Construction of the test road began in 1997 and ended in 2002. It opened to traffic in March 2004. So far, many field tests have been carried out to evaluate the response and performance of pavements. At asphalt sections, the first attempt was made to correlate design parameters with the performance of pavements, and this is the focus of this paper. Performance was characterized by the evolution of failures, such as rutting, cracking, and longitudinal road profile. Design parameters included surface type, base type, base thickness, and anti-frost layer. Field surveys were made with an automatic road analyzer for the 2002-2007 period, and trends in pavement failures were analyzed with respect to individual design parameters. Also, a highway present condition index (HPCI) was adopted to assess the overall performance of individual sections. Findings of this study are being used to validate pavement performance models incorporated into the MEPDG that is scheduled to be released in 2010.