Assessment of Pavement Life at First Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Test in Louisiana

The first full-scale accelerated pavement testing experiment in Louisiana began in February 1996. The purpose was to evaluate the historically prevalent flexible crushed-stone and in-place soil cement-stabilized base construction in comparison with several alternative base construction materials and construction processes for pavements designed for a semitropical climate. More than 6 million equivalent single-axle loads (ESALs) were applied to nine test lanes in the three phases of the project. The full-scale loading was provided by an accelerated loading facility (ALF) machine, the second of its type in the United States. Surface deflection, longitudinal and transverse profiles, surface cracking, stresses and strains in the pavement structure, as well as environmental conditions were monitored during testing. The initial findings are presented in relation to rutting, roughness, cracking, layer modulus, and stress and strain evolution. In order to account for the localized deterioration of some lanes, a method based on statistical survival analysis theory was used to assess the pavement life. Reasonable agreement was observed between the life of the tested structures and the life predicted by the current procedure, on the basis of the 1993 pavement design guide from AASHTO, for the crushed-stone base pavements. The observed lives of the pavements with a soil cement base were shorter than the predicted lives.