The influence of truck traffic on pavement deterioration in the City of Winnipeg
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Date
1997
Authors
Alam, Mohammed Maksudul
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Abstract
Over the past 20 years, truck size and weight restrictions have been relaxed in Canada, as well as many other countries, to improve the efficiency of trucking operations. These heavier trucks pose new demands for the transportation engineering profession to understand the implications of heavier loads on pavement design, deterioration, maintenance, and management. This research is directed at providing new knowledge to improve our understanding of the effects of heavier loads. The research examines the hypothesis that the overall deterioration on the City of Winnipeg's truck route pavements increases with pavement aging and traffic loads. The test of the hypothesis was carried out using the City of Winnipeg's PAVER (pavement management system's software) pavement condition data for the truck route network collected between 1985 to 1994, The relationship between historical pavement condition data and the pavement age was then established for pavement sections that had been subjected to a range of traffic load over the years. The pavement performance equations for a number of different load groups were then compared among themselves over the same time frame. The difference in pavement performance across the different load groups was found not to be significant. The hypothesis was rejected in favor of the conclusion that the City of Winnipeg's truck route pavement deterioration was influenced by pavement aging and not by truck loads. The analysis used to test the hypothesis was then used to improve the existing pavement deterioration models used by the City of Winnipeg's PAVER pavement management system. Nonlinear relationships of pavement condition data and pavement age were established for both Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) and Asphalt overlay on Portland cement Concrete (APC) pavement sections. The relationships were tested against the pavement conditions which were observed in 1995 and 1996. The pavement deterioration model established for PCC pavement was found to be highly satisfactory in predicting the pavement condition of pavement sections within the age range of 0 to 20 years. The APC model was found to be satisfactory within the pavement age range of 0 to 5 years.