The implementation of performance-oriented specifications holds the promise of providing pavements that perform as they were designed to and of optimising the use of tax dollars spent for highway construction. This will require the application of models relating materials, traffic, and environmental variables to expected pavement performance and life-cycle costs. To illustrate the potential benefits of performance-oriented specifications, hypothetical case studies were conducted in which the expected performance of pavements constructed using existing specifications was evaluated. The aim was to determine whether asphalts and mixtures considered to be acceptable underexisting specifications may actually show significant differences in predicted performance and life-cycle costs under similar conditions, based on applications of the performance relationships selected for this particular exercise. The differences obtained would indicate the potential benefits of performance-oriented specification and the adequacy, or lack thereof, of existing specifications with respect to controlling asphalt and mixture properties that determine pavement performance. (Author/publisher)
Abstract