Short-term evaluation of crack sealing and filling

•Crack sealing materials were used regardless of their intended climate conditions.•FWD provided meaningful differences for the evaluation of crack sealing performance.•Crack sealing did not show any improvements in short-term (10 month).

This paper presents a short-term evaluation of crack sealing and filling on two test roads in Indiana. A nation-wide survey was conducted including states in Canada in order to review the current crack sealing and filling practice. Based on the review, nine crack sealing and filling materials were selected and both crack and pavement performances were evaluated using Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD), International Roughness Index (IRI), ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), and visual inspection. The data was collected over 10-month period upon completion of test section constructions in 2013.Based on the survey and review of the practice of crack sealing and filling in 2012, sealing and filling materials were used regardless of their intended climate condition according to ASTM D 6690 specification. Among the four test methods, only FWD provided statistically meaningful differences between treated sections and the control section and between routed and non-routed subsections. In addition, visual inspection did not provide meaningful results for the evaluation of crack sealing and filling short-term performances. The sections applied with the crack sealing and filling materials did not show any improvements in terms of the pavement and crack performances. In addition, the routed subsection performances, in general, were not significantly different from that of the non-routed subsections. Among nine different products evaluated in this study, only RoadSavor 201 and RoadSavor 211 from Crafco showed the best performance in the non-routed and routed subsections.