Development of Asphalt Pavement Transverse Crack Initiation Models Based on LTPP Data

Deterioration modeling plays a key role in pavement design and management. Accurate deterioration models that predict the initiation of pavement distress can provide a crucial insight into the expected condition of pavement infrastructure along its service life, which in turn is particularly useful in planning maintenance and rehabilitation activities, budget estimation and resource allocation at both the project and network levels. This paper focuses on developing a distress initiation model for transverse cracking in flexible pavements. Data from the in-service pavements in the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program are used to develop a survival model that accounts for censoring bias due to unobserved events such as limited observation duration. The model estimation results reflect pavement transverse cracking initiation time from a probabilistic viewpoint and also are consistent with engineering judgment.