THE ARRB INTEGRATED PROJECT LEVEL PAVEMENT PERFORMANCE AND LIFE-CYCLE COSTING MODEL FOR SEALED GRANULAR PAVEMENTS

The effectiveness of alternative options for pavement maintenance and rehabilitation works is best judged by consideration of their life-cycle performance, through a pavement performance and road user cost modelling process. The report describes just such a recently developed integrated model for the analysis of chip sealed full depth unbound granular pavements. Capabilities include technical modelling of pavement condition deterioration under almost any traffic loading, a range of climatic regimes, the effects of reactive soils, construction quality variations in pavement and drainage, and a range of rehabilitation and maintenance options, including drainage, triggered by condition or programmed. Economic modelling includes automatic calculation of authority costs for treatments, and of road user costs for any traffic mix within the flow. The user selects traffic growth, discount rate, and analysis period. Optimisation of option selection is by a genetic algorithm. Analysis can be unconstrained or constrained, in accordance with almost any user selected combination of technical or economic criteria. (a)