Bituminous Road Deterioration
Base Types
- Granular Base
- Asphalt Base
- Asphalt Pavement Base
- Stabilized Base
Surface Types and Materials
- Asphalt Concrete
- Hot Rolled Modified Asphalt
- Rubberized Asphalt
- Polymer Asphalt Concrete
- Soft Bitumen Mix (Cold Mix)
- Porous Asphalt
- Stone Mastic
Distress Modes
Surfacing Distress
- Cracking
- Ravelling
- Potholing
- Edge-Break
Deformation Distress
- Rutting
- Roughness
Pavement Surface Texture Distress
- Texture Depth
- Skid Resistance
Drainage Distress
- Drainage
Cracking Area: Sum of rectangular areas circumscribing manifest distress (line cracks are assigned a width of 0.5 m), expressed as a percentage of carriageway area.
Structural Cracking
- Narrow Cracking (1-3 mm crack width)
- Wide Cracking (> 3 mm crack width)
Thermal Transverse Cracking
Ravelling Area: Area of loss of material from wearing surface, expressed as a percentage of carriageway area.
- Number of Potholes: Number of potholes per kilometer expressed in terms of the number of ‘standard’ sized potholes of area 0.1 m2. A pothole being defined as an open cavity in road surface with at least 150 mm diameter and at least 25 mm depth.Edge Break Area: Loss of bituminous surface material (and possibly base materials) from the edge of the pavement, expressed in square meters per km.
HDM-4 assigns a depth of 100 mm to potholes and edge break area
Rutting: Permanent traffic-associated deformation within pavement layers which, if channelised into wheelpaths, accumulates over time and becomes manifested as a rut, expressed as the maximum depth under 2 m straightedge placed transversely across a wheelpath.
Roughness: Deviations of surface from true planar surface with characteristic dimensions that affect vehicle dynamics, ride quality, dynamic loads and drainage, expressed in the International Roughness Index, IRI (m/km).
Texture Depth: Average depth of the surface of a road expressed as the quotient of a given volume of standardized material (sand) and the area of that material spread in a circular patch on the surface being tested.
Skid Resistance: Resistance to skidding expressed by the sideways force coefficient (SDF) at 50 km/h measured using the Sideways Force Coefficient Routine Investigation Machine (SCRIM).
Pavement Strength
The strength of bituminous pavements is characterised by the adjusted structural number – SNP
The SNP applies a weighting factor, which reduces with increasing depth, to the sub-base and sub-grade contributions so that the pavement strength for deep pavements is not over-predicted.
SNPS = SNBASUS + SNSUBAS + SNSUBG
SNBASU = contribution from surface and base layers
SNSUBA = contribution from sub-base layers
SNSUBG = contribution from subgrade
S = season
Crack Modelling
Structural Cracking: This is effectively load and age/environment associated cracking.
Transverse Thermal Cracking: This is generally caused by large diurnal temperature changes or in freeze/thaw conditions, and therefore usually occurs in certain climates.
For each type of cracking, separate relationships are given for predicting the time to initiation and the rate of progression.