Continuous wavelet analysis of pavement profiles

• Continuous wavelet transform is a valuable tool to characterize road profiles.
• Wavelet analysis can be utilized as a filtering technique to predict vehicle ride quality.
• Wavelet filtering can be used to characterize local pavement roughness features.

Pavement roughness can be quantified by analyzing the response of vehicle suspensions to road geometry or by analyzing basic geometric measurements (e.g., crack width and depth). These analyses can be either summative or pointwise. In recent studies, wavelet transform has been used to quantify road roughness by correlating the energies of wavebands to summative IRI values rather than identifying localized features and their effect on vehicle suspension response (SR) using quarter-car (QC) simulations. Because pointwise SR analysis can identify localized features, the objective of this study is to investigate the applicability and advantages of analyzing asphaltic and Portland cement pavements with QC simulation and continuous wavelet transform (CWT). This approach provides spatial assessment of roughness as a function of both frequency band and position and allows statistical comparisons of SR at different frequency bands. An advantage of this method is analyzing relatively short segments which can support near real-time assessment.

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