Life-Cycle Cost Analysis System for Pavement Management

This paper presents a new Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) system based on an optimization model considering pavement performance, called OPTIPAV, developed and programmed to help pavement designers to choose the best pavement structure for a road or highway. The LCCA system considers the serviceability concept adopted by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) for use in the design of flexible pavements. The OPTIPAV can solve the problem of making LCCA for typical design periods (20 years) but also for longer periods (40 years or more), in order to compare different pavement solutions in terms of global costs for the final choice of the pavement structure for a national road or highway. Additionally, the OPTIPAV system provides a good solution to the pavement design problem considering not only design criteria but also construction costs, maintenance costs, user costs and the residual value of pavement structures. The results obtained by the application of the new LCCA system clearly indicate that it is a valuable addition to the road engineer's toolbox.