Performance monitoring and data acquisition for pavement performance evaluation

The Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) studies undertaken by the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) require an extensive data collection effort. More than 1000 in-service pavement test sections, located throughout the United States and Canada, will be monitored when all aspects of the LTPP studies are under way. At present, the initial round of data collection on the GPS (General Pavement Studies) test sites identified to date is well underway, and work is progressing rapidly on the remaining portions of the LTPP program. The SHRP test sections were selected to represent the full range of pavement design practice and climatic conditions present in most of North America. No two test sections are exactly alike in terms of materials, climatic conditions, traffic, etc. SHRP's data acquisition effort must provide for quantitative measures of the performance of each test section, and the factors which influence that performance. The data collected will include pavement profile and distress data for monitoring pavement performance, pavement deflection data, to help define the structural characteristics of pavement materials data, traffic data, and data describing any maintenance and rehabilitation performed on the test sections throughout the duration of the SHRP monitoring effort. This paper will discuss the data acquisition requirements for SHRP's Long Term Pavement Performance studies, and SHRP's efforts to meet those requirements. Equipment calibration and other quality assurance measures will be among the topics discussed, as will SHRP's efforts to balance the data requirements against data collection cost. For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 832707. (A)