Study on Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Based Pavement Maintenance Design Methodology

For many years in China, mainly due to the lack of relevant specifications, standards and practical technology for pavement maintenance design, the selection of maintenance treatments mainly relied on engineers' experience. To solve these problems, research on maintenance design methodology for high-grade highways was carried out in 2007, sponsored by the Ministry of Transport of China. Since then, 250,000 km of pavement condition data from the country road network have been collected by use of a self-developed high-speed road condition inspection system known as CiCS. Based on a great amount of field survey data, systematic study and analysis were made of long-term pavement performance deterioration pattern and pavement distress diagnosis methodology. A life-cycle cost analysis based pavement maintenance design methodology, combined with a set of software (PORD), was developed, which included several pavement condition indexes, such as pavement distress, roughness, rutting, anti-skid resistance, and pavement structure strength. The newly developed methodology is characteristic of total process controlling of long term pavement performance through the pavement structural and functional design. Based on life-cycle costs analysis, it is also capable of selecting cost-effective maintenance treatments meeting with mechanical and service performance requirements. The pavement maintenance design methodology has been applied on a practical engineering project with satisfactory results.