Guidelines for Routine Maintenance of Concrete Pavement (0-5821-1)

Concrete pavement has shown great performance in urban area and interstate highway settings for many years because of its low maintenance requirements and capability for long service life. However, rapidly increasing heavy traffic accelerates pavement deterioration and increases the need for more maintenance than in the past. If proper maintenance is not employed at low levels of deterioration, in a timely manner, acute degradation of pavement serviceability will occur and major repair costs may be needed. This report discusses the visual identification of various distress types and introduces evaluation techniques using nondestructive testing (NDT), which are key to determining proper routine maintenance activities. According to the areas selected from the simplified checklist of visual distress types, falling weight deflectometer (FWD) for structural condition evaluation, ground penetration radar (GPR) for detecting voids below the slab and the presence of trapped water, and dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP) for estimating the in situ strength of base and subgrade soils are used to provide current information on pavement condition for selection of needed repair methods using a simple, systematic decision process. Key routine maintenances activities are categorized into five levels: performance monitoring, preservative, functional concrete pavement repair (CPR), structural CPR, and remove and replace. During field investigations, poorly performing areas were identified and possible fixes determined as a means of guideline development.