A 2-years research project was sponsored by the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) and conducted by University of Nevada at Reno to evaluate the long term performance of maintenance activities on hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavements that NDOT has implemented for the past 15 years. During the course of this research project, eleven maintenance activities were identified after several meetings with the NDOT maintenance personnel. A total of 847 field sections were selected and evaluated in this study. The performance of the selected field sections were assessed based on the pavement condition before and after treatment application. The analysis evaluated the likelihood of enhancing the pavement performance as well as the anticipated performance period for the various treatments. Furthermore, the benefit-cost ratios for the various treatments were evaluated given the pre-treatment pavement condition, traffic level, and environmental conditions. Based on the findings of this study, a set of guidelines are provided that can help in selecting the most cost effective maintenance activities based on the most favorable conditions, in terms of environment, traffic, and conditions of the existing pavement (i.e. PSI, IRI, rut depth, fatiguecracking, transverse cracking, and block cracking).
Abstract