Pavement Evaluation

Pavement evaluation comprises structural assessment, surface conditions evaluation, functional evaluation and safety evaluation. That type of information provides fundamental subsidies for paving rehabilitation projects, pavement management systems (PMS), maintenance plans and the early diagnostics of pavement failures.

Engefoto made significant investments in this field, by both buying equipment and developing systems, especially to build capacity of their technical team. Structural evaluation can be carried out by destructive processes (probing and laboratory tests), or by non-destructive processes if preferred.

Non-destructive processes are carried out by a KUAB falling weight deflectometer (FWD) used in a wide range of works carried out within the Brazilian territory. The equipment enables the automatic acquisition of deflection under impact load applied to a circular metal plaque.

Generated pulse load is conducive for a good approximate simulation of the effect of dynamic road load. Interpretation of deflection basin results is performed in the office environment using specific software that enables the evaluation of resilient modules in actual in-field conditions and provides information for the division into homogeneous behavior segments, sizing reinforcement and assessing structural conditions.

Assessing surface conditions means identifying existing failures, registering them and interpreting the results. Until recently, evaluation depended on performing an inventory that was carried out by an assessor who would walk along the road taking notes on a spreadsheet, or by a data collector of existing defects on sample areas.

Currently, ENGEFOTO uses their self-developed multipurpose equipment called LandRunner to assess paving surface conditions. The LandRunner is mounted on a customized vehicle that can photograph the road platform using a camera mounted at the front and shooting the close-up of the paving details via a camera at the back. Software-programmed photo-shooting can be arranged for precise pre-determined distances. The back-end camera shoots each individual traffic lane to provide the visual inspection base, thus identifying pavement failed areas. Images are collected in-field and analyzed at the workplace, whereby it is always possible to return to the sites to clarify doubts.

In terms of surveying the paving’s functional conditions, the LandRunner is fit with a three-sensor laser profilometer. This fully-automated system detects IRI or QI longitudinal irregularity parameters at client-defined intervals.