Development of pavement serviceability evaluation criteria for urban roads

Abstract

Serviceability is one of the fundamentals concepts widely used to design and manage pavement structures by the road engineering community. Using the City of Barranquilla’s urban rigid pavements as the datum source, this study was conducted to formulate, propose, and compare some pavement serviceability evaluation criteria for low-speed roads in an urban setting, typical of developing countries. Deterministic and probabilistic modeling of the PSI was conducted based on two different approaches associated with recognized pavement roughness indicators, namely: (1) the traditional methodology using the International Roughness Index (IRI), and (2) an alternative methodology based on the whole-body vibration (WBV) concepts using the vertical frequency-weighted RMS acceleration (awz). Overall, this study has demonstrated that for accurate estimation of the ride quality and comfort, in terms of PSI, the evaluation criteria should correspondingly be based on representative field conditions. In this sense, the results of this study suggest a plausible potential in the ability of the awz-based concept compared to the traditional IRI-based serviceability models to adequately describe the users’ perceptions of low-speed urban city road. Finally, the criteria proposed in this study can potentially serve as an objective instrument to prioritize road infrastructure projects at the local network level. In this way, it can support the decision-making process by road agencies, optimize the schedule of maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) activities and, therefore, achieve an increase in the welfare of the urban population.