Part 3: Pavement Surface Properties-Vehicle Interaction: Methodology for Detection of Defect Locations in Pavement Profile

Pavement smoothness has become a standard measure of pavement quality. Transportation agencies strive to build and maintain smoother pavements. Road users generally perceive the quality of a pavement on the basis of how well it rides, which is severely affected by the presence of defects (bumps or dips) in the pavement profile. Defects are corrected according to the smoothness specifications prescribed by respective agencies. The effectiveness of any method used to identify defect locations depends on the decrease in roughness obtained on correction of the defects. Following this line of thought, this paper presents a method for the detection of defects based on a comparison of the original profile with a target or a desired profile. The proposed methodology is based on the international roughness index (IRI) gain function for the identification of defect locations to improve smoothness in pavements. This method uses the discrete Fourier transform to help identify defect locations on the basis of deviatio...