Quantifying Incremental Pavement Damage Caused by Overweight Trucks

Significant increases in commercial truck loadings across the Saskatchewan road network have resulted in accelerated damage to the provincial highway system. This accelerated damage has decreased the expected performance life of many of these roads and also increased maintenance and rehabilitation requirements and costs. Although provincial highways have maximum commercial legal load limits and most commercial carriers are compliant, it is inevitable that some trucks will exceed legal load limits. In the past, difficulties have been encountered in efforts to quantitatively account for incremental pavement damage due to overweight vehicles. With its aged state, the performance prediction of incremental damage on Saskatchewan highways resulting from commercial vehicle overloading is difficult to quantify using empirical highway design methods and pavement surface distress surveys. This study employed a mechanistic-based pavement analysis framework. Using Saskatchewan primary and secondary highway structural asset management data based on heavy weight deflectometer (HWD) network deflection data, the incremental damage from typical trucks operating on Saskatchewan highways was determined. In total, overloading the Saskatchewan highway network by 15 percent trucks (assuming 30,000 truck trips per day) province wide results in an overall daily cost of $621 per km per day and an overall annual cost of $226,677 per km per year. Based on the impact analysis carried out in this study, reducing the number of overweight trucks on Saskatchewan's highway network could significantly reduce road damage costs. Savings will not only be seen in terms of preservation and rehabilitation costs, but also in overall structural performance of the road. For the covering abstract of this conference see record control number 201111RT334E.

• Record URL:
  http://conf.tac-atc.ca/english/annualconference/tac2011/english/papers_by_title.htm
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)

  401-1111 Prince of Wales Drive
  Ottawa, Ontario  Canada 
• Authors:
  • PODBOROCHYNSKI, D
  • BERTHELOT, C
  • ANTHONY, A
  • MARJERISON, B
  • LITZENBERGER, R
  • KEALY, T
• Conference:
  • 2011 CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION OF THE TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION OF CANADA. TRANSPORTATION SUCCESSES: LET'S BUILD ON THEM. 2011 Congress et Exhibition de l'Association des Transports du Canada. Les Succes en Transports: Une Tremplin vers l'Avenir
  • Location: Edmonton , Canada
  • Date: 2011-9-11 to 2011-9-14
• Publication Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Pagination: 20 p.
• Monograph Title: 2011 Conference and Exhibition of the Transportation Association of Canada - Transportation Successes: Let's Build on Them

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Conferences; Costs; Deflection; Flexible pavements; Highways; Load limits; Loss and damage; Measurement; Networks; Pavements; Trucks; Types of roads by network; Vehicle weight
• Uncontrolled Terms: Traffic networks
• Geographic Terms: Canada
• ITRD Terms: 8018: Canada; 8525: Conference; 224: Cost; 1614: Damage; 5586: Deflection; 1527: Excess load (veh); 2944: Flexible pavement; 2755: Highway; 1236: Lorry; 6136: Measurement; 1054: Network (traffic); 2955: Pavement
• Subject Areas: Motor Carriers; Pavements; I22: Design of Pavements, Railways and Guideways; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01360509
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)
• Files: ITRD, TAC
• Created Date: Jan 9 2012 12:59PM