Selection of suitable treatment for cracking in flexible pavements using optimization models

Abstract

Cracking types of flexible pavements is one of the sophisticated problems in the domain of highway engineering that can decrease the serviceability of the highway, reduce its service life, and increase its operating cost. Identifying the cracking, discovering its causes, and deciding on the suitable treatment is an essential objective that can reduce the operating cost of the highway and prevent future deterioration of the pavements, especially if the treatment is applied in the early stage. However, selection of the optimum treatment is not that easy as it is affected by numerous inherent and external parameters. Therefore, providing an effective tool to manipulate those parameters and suggest the optimum treatment is a vital objective. Therefore, this study aims to develop a computerized package that contains mathematical models to attain this objective. The models used two main components. First, the weights of each factor affect the identification and treatment of the cracking types. These weights were determined based on data collected from professionals in the domain. Second, field data is fed to the models by the end users. The models can process the input data with knowledge embedded within their inference engine to suggest the optimum treatment for 11 different cracking types. The program was validated by professionals and evaluated by the users. Its overall acceptability was 85% for the users due to its ease of use, flexible interface, and speed of running. The program can be updated anytime and can be upgraded to include other types of pavement deterioration.