Development of incremental distress equations for concrete pavements: an application to model transverse joint faulting

Abstract

This paper briefly describes a global methodology to develope incremental equations for pavement distress prediction, which are very useful to evaluate in-service pavements. Such methodology is subsequently applied to model transverse joint faulting in concrete pavements, considering joints without dowelbars. The results show that models obtained from statistical regression of incremental distress data, compared with absolute distress models, seem to have very similar capacities to simulate distress progression. However, the incremental equations developed in this study have many limitations caused by a large incidence of different error sources and by the lack of enough information of distress progression in the observed pavements.