Evaluation of Rigid Pavement Condition Using Falling Weight Deflectometer

Proper evaluation of the plain concrete rigid pavement is important for proper corrective maintenance. Often loss of load transfer and loss of support (LOS) are hard to predict. There are several ways to evaluate them. Currently they are identified by visual evaluation and faulting measurements. Most often slab jacking, grouting, and special material treatments are applied to correct the defect. But it is hard to measure effectiveness of such treatments. Presently, nondestructive tests such as Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) have been used to measure deflections of pavement to evaluate loss of load transfer and support. Some of the corrected slabs resulted in lesser load transfer efficiency. Again, the FWD analysis resulted in very poor load transfer efficiency in the pavements without any visible or substantial faulting. Five different load transfer efficiency computation methods were evaluated. The FWD deflection analysis used to evaluate the maintenance treatment on the corrected slabs resulted in mixed conclusion. Methods have been used in the evaluation of rigid pavement condition survey and apply appropriate application. The load transfer in the rigid pavement without dowel bar is due to aggregate interlock and base/subbase support. A method has been devised to evaluate the load transfer efficiency (LTE) and a criterion for LOS has been selected. Statistical analysis-of-variance was used to analyze significance of the different results. The result from this method reflected the true condition of the existing pavement and is recommended for the rigid-pavement-condition evaluation. The paper discussed in detail using the Utah rigid pavement system level data.