OPTIMIZATION OF MAINTENANCE AND REHABILITATION STRATEGY USING STRUCTURAL CAPACITY INDEX AND SURFACE DISTRESS INDEX

The establishment of an effective pavement management system requires a reliable serviceability index and accurate prediction of the deterioration in serviceability. Serviceability includes factors such as riding quality, surface distress, skid resistance and deflection. Most pavement management systems use a combined serviceability index, which involves adding or multiplying together the individual factors of serviceability. In this study, pavement functions were divided into two groups: surface characteristics and bearing capacity. The time needed for rehabilitation of surface distress and repair of bearing capacity were optimized by genetic algorithms. Through optimization simulation of the Maintenance and Rehabilitation (M&R) strategy, the authors also obtained the minimum acceptable level for surface distress that optimizes the life-cycle costs in M&R. Furthermore, they investigated the effects of bearing capacity on M&R strategy.