A Framework for Quantification of Effect of Drainage Quality on Structural and Functional Performance of Pavement

Drainage quality is an important parameter which affects the highway pavement performance. Excessive water content in the pavement base, sub-base, and sub-grade soils can cause early distress and lead to a structural or functional failure of pavement. Thus, when selecting appropriate maintenance strategies the cost of pavement maintenance needs to be compared with the cost of improving the quality of drainage. Hence, there is a need to quantify the effect of various types of drainage quality on performance of the pavement. However, very few studies have investigated to what extent quality of drainage affects the performance of pavement. Therefore, this study identifies a simple framework for quantification of effect of drainage quality on structural as well as functional performance of the pavement. The proposed framework presents the structural and functional performance of the pavement is predicted in terms of deflection and roughness respectively. It is expected that this study will useful to reduce the maintenance cost of highway pavement system and hence will be useful to preserve huge highway network in India.