The identification, classification and causes of pavement under-performance.

This paper presents the results of Austroads Project AT1067 that covered the following: (1) the development of a desktop approach for estimating the linear roughness progression rate (LRPR) for identifying and classifying good, fair and poor performing pavements for a network performance profile; (2) use of this approach to identify poor performance on pavement segments selected for follow up field inspection; and (3) a questionnaire survey for practitioners to rank the broad and specific causes of poor performance of pavement segments in Queensland identified by their high estimated values of LRPR. The LRPR estimation approach assesses the underlying rate of roughness deterioration using time series roughness data on individual pavement segments and accepting or rejecting individual data points by a set of data filtering rules aimed at estimating the underlying rate of the most recent deterioration. Field inspections of the 10 worst under-performing segments identified by their excessive LRPR in Victoria and South Australia gave 100 per cent correlation with poor performance confirmed by the visual distresses observed on each segment. The questionnaire survey found that the broad causes of under-performance, in descending order, were ranked as follows: (1) inadequate design; (2) inadequate maintenance; (3) inadequate materials; and, (4) inadequate construction. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. 0612AR242E.