This week, AgileAssets is at the International Chinese European Workshop on functional pavement design, in Delft, the Netherlands.
Mr. Pim Visser, a consultant for AgileAssets, will be presenting a paper on the importance of integrating design and management in pavement processes. Along with co-author, Dr. Ronald Hudson, he suggests a new regime of pavement asset management, including data from all stages; testing, calculation, production, testing, evaluation, maintenance and rehabilitation into one Pavement Management System.
Through a historic approach, the authors describe the evolution of pavements from the early flexible pavements of the 40s to the introduction of bitumen binders and how to manage those through the 60s and 70s.
The Shell Pavement Design Manual was introduced in 1978, allowing road agencies to produce ever more stable asphalt mixtures. This popular manual contained many design charts, data tables, and worksheets and has been used worldwide to design pavements. In the USA an extensive research program sponsored by AASHTO (The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) resulted in 2004 in the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide.
Over the years, many transport agencies have developed their own pavement design systems. Whatever pavement design system is used, it is essential that the specific main parameters of the design are entered into the Pavement Management System of the agency. In that way, the results of the first structural evaluation of the as-built pavement can be compared with the design data and long-term performance data can be channeled back to the designers in order to compare them with the design predictions.
And this life-cycle of applied knowledge requires a highly advanced software system that can handle a high number of variables, including estimated future performance of the pavement under almost any number of possible stresses and circumstances. The AgileAssets solutions are an example of such a system that is integrating engineering rules like deterioration models and collected data from different assets.
The CEW 2016 is the fourth of its kind and is organized by the Section of Pavement Engineering, Delft University of Technology and will take place from 29th June to 1st of July 2016.
Main topics of the event include:
Safety, pavements & environment, rolling resistance, recycling, measurements and testing, as well as life cycle cost analysis, structures, and material design.
Written by: Mikkel Bruun on June 28, 2016