EVALUATION OF A LIGHTWEIGHT PROFILER FOR MEASUREMENT OF PCC PAVEMENT ROUGHNESS IN FLORIDA

Abstract

Road smoothness/roughness is gaining growing importance as an indicator of a pavement condition, both in terms of performance, and as a major determinant of road user costs. Therefore, attaining acceptable surface smoothness on newly constructed pavements is becoming a major concern to highway agencies. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) currently specifies the use of a California-type profilograph for acceptance purposes of the final surface finish on Portland cement concrete (PCC) pavements. However, testing using such a device is slow, tedious, and labor intensive. It is Florida’s intent to automate the process of ride acceptance. Thus, FDOT initiated a field study to assess the feasibility of implementing the use of laser-based lightweight profilers for such a purpose. If a lightweight profiler is to be considered for ride acceptance in Florida, it is essential to assess its level of correlation with the currently specified profilograph device. Profile Index values were acquired using both a lightweight profiler and a California-type profilograph concurrently on a large number of concrete pavement sections for comparative purposes. In addition, the lightweight profiler testing repeatability and the effects of its testing speed gradients on roughness measurements were also considered. This paper presents a description of the testing program, the data collection effort as well as the subsequent analyses and findings.