Normalized truncated Levy walk applied to flexible pavement performance

Government agencies and consulting companies face the challenge of pavement management aiming to maintain pavements in serviceable condition in the long term. This paper analyzed the evolution of the performance of flexible pavements to forecast the change in the serviceability level offered by the structure. Data from the Minnesota Road Research Project (MnROAD) road test corresponding to the low-volume traffic loop were used in the study. The data analysis centered on the normalized truncated Levy walk model. It was concluded that the truncated Levy distribution optimally describes the decrease of pavement serviceability caused by traffic and climatic conditions specific to the infrastructure location and traffic. The Truncated Levy Flight (TLF) provided a better approximation over the full range of the normalized pavement serviceability index than the Gaussian distribution for dataset considered.

► The TLF represents pavement performance behavior due to environmental factors. ► TLF shows the serviceability trend of asphalt pavements of low volume roads. ► The study showed the underlying pattern typical of pavement serviceability change.