Evaluation of pavement cracking performance in the state of Rhode Island using falling weight deflectometer data

The rehabilitation process usually undertaken by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) for preservation of cracked pavement involves milling and replacing 2.5-5 cm of the surface layer. The problem associated with the above process was that the pavement in Rhode Island still failed prematurely and thus caused RIDOT lose millions of dollars. The purpose of this study was to determine ways that the cracking can be controlled in the surface layer and provide the solution for this problem in the form of catalog from which various stiffness and thickness can be selected for the surface layer based on different field condition. The criteria that differentiated an uncracked section from cracked sections were found to be a limiting value of tensile critical strain beneath the surface layer. In most of the overlay sections it was observed that the thickness provided by the RIDOT was too thin and thus cracking was observed at those stations.