摘要: |
New construction miles make up only a small fraction of the Federal highway construction effort each year. The bulk of Federal effort is in reconstruction and rehabilitation. One of the biggest impacts on rehabilitation and construction costs can result from extending the life of existing pavements through the use of new technologies fro determining optimum maintenance treatments and schedules. Technologies are needed that assess the pavement condition prior to the appearance of visible distress. Successful technologies could reduce pavement maintenance and rehabilitation costs by a factor of six. A non-contact infrared technology will be examined in this work that addresses the early detection of pavement distresses. The Asphalt Surface Aging Prediction (ASPA) system is based on the indirect measurement of the stiffness or modulus of the binder at the surface of an asphalt pavement using Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. This technology, if proven successful will determine the modulus of the binder at the pavement surface, and with two or more field measurements, allow prediction of the rate of modulus increase. Couple with climate information, this will allow a preemptive maintenance trigger to be created based on a limiting modulus value for a pavement. |