Structural and functional evaluation of urban road network of patiala city for developing cost effective maintenance strategies

Abstract

Satisfactory maintenance of highway network is essential for any country for its economic growth. The maintenance of pavements and particularly the flexible pavements is an essential requirement for the efficiency of highway network. The magnitude of work involved in maintenance is very large but the funds available are not enough to meet the requirements. The only option left is to manage the roads within the available limited resources, in an optional manner, by making use of the scientific pavement management tools. There are various factors responsible for early deterioration of the pavements in urban areas like large traffic volume and the inadequate drainage system. The development of higher stresses leads to premature failure of urban pavements. Structural failure occurs if the pavement fails to carry design loads satisfactorily and functional failure occurs if it does not provide a smooth riding surface which in turn increases the discomfort and vehicle operating costs influencing the pavement performance and consequently overall transportation costs. The most versatile approach to predict pavement deterioration is to model the major modes of distress individually because different distress types need different maintenance treatment. Pavement deterioration models, for prediction of pavement condition at a future date, form an important input in the pavement management system for (i) assessing the state of health of the pavements. (ii) Deciding upon the optional maintenance and rehabilitation treatments for a given operating situation. (iii) Planning and programming of short term and long term maintenance budgets. These tools are needed and are used for economic analysis of various alternate maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. The objective of this study is to evaluate the structural and functional parameters of the selected urban road network of Patiala City after every three months’ time interval to get the behavior of the distresses in the urban roads. Both the inventory data and the pavement condition data has been stored in databases, created in Highway Development and Management Software (HDM-4). Present Serviceability Index (PSI) has been calculated as an indicator of the pavement health for the selected road network of the Patiala city. The various maintenance alternatives have been analyzed by using Highway Development & viii Management System (HDM-4) and an optimum maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) strategy for a pavement section has been determined on the basis of highest Benefit to Cost ratio for the total analysis period of 15 years. The remaining service life of all the road sections has been calculated, if no maintenance practice is provided to the surface.