New Project: Benefits of Preventive Concrete Pavement Maintenance

Early preventive maintenance of concrete pavement—maintenance performed in the first five to seven years of pavement life—is a low-cost way to increase pavement service life. But no quantitative evaluations of service life extension have been conducted that compare early intervention to late or no intervention.

Without these comparisons, meaningful determinations of pavement life extension operations cannot be made. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) research has found that agency projects focused on the end-of-service life may redirect funds from rehabilitation projects that could improve overall system quality.

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“Research is limited concerning the impact that early intervention, low-cost preventive maintenance activities have on cost-effectively increasing the service life of concrete pavement,” explained Joel Ulring, pavement preservation engineer, MnDOT Office of Materials and Road Research.

Objectives

A new research study will evaluate the service life extension of concrete pavements that results from various maintenance activities and schedules used by MnDOT and other Minnesota municipal and county public works agencies.

Researchers will develop a tool, such as a decision tree or matrix, that planners, designers, pavement engineers and public works engineers can use to guide their selection of appropriate and cost-effective maintenance actions for concrete pavements. The maintenance strategy may include a means of determining the right pavement intervention at the right time on the right pavement following MnDOT’s FHWA-based when, where and how pavement preservation protocol.