Pavement stiffness is a basic quantity in pavement design and maintenance usually measured by the Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD). FWD measurements yield valuable data but are costly as they require personnel, which is why they are done only occasionally. Pavement service life management by new technology was a cooperation project between three Finnish universities. The project was launched to evaluate the potential of new sensor technology in pavement monitoring. Different kinds of newly developed and traditional sensors were installed at three test sites during summer 2006. One of the test sites was on a low volume road. The objective of the instrumentations was to collect information on road structure behavior for service life estimations. The research found a new technique for determining the pavement deflections caused by a moving vehicle. This paper introduces the used extensive instrumentations and the measuring methods. Some preliminary measurement results concerning frost depth and pavement stiffness based on deflections are presented. The results on the effect of frost on pavement stiffness over time come from the Vesilahti test site.
Abstract