Effect of Pavement Condition Monitoring Frequency with Unequal Interval on Determining Pavement Service Life

Accurate determination of pavement service life based on time-series pavement condition data is crucial to achieve many pavement maintenance and management objectives. Although pavement condition monitoring frequency is one of the most important influencing factors used to estimate pavement service life, previous studies and applications are mainly focused on different monitoring frequencies with equal time intervals. No studies investigating the effect of pavement monitoring frequency with unequal time intervals for the determination of pavement service life have been conducted. In this study, the effects of estimating pavement service life using two pavement condition monitoring methods (equal versus unequal time intervals) under the same monitoring frequency were investigated. Two potential influencing factors, i.e., estimation methods (trend interpolation and extrapolation) and R² of the fitted performance curve, were considered in this study. The analysis results indicate that, compared to the equal interval monitoring method at the same monitoring frequency, especially for pavement sections using the trend extrapolation method, the estimated accuracy of pavement service life was significantly improved using the unequal interval monitoring method. According to the analysis results, an optimal pavement condition monitoring method was developed and validated based on unequal interval monitoring using actual pavement condition data of I-16 in Georgia.