Validation of a Novel Sensing Approach for Continuous Pavement Monitoring Using Full-Scale APT Testing

The objective of this paper is to present a novel approach for the continuous monitoring of pavement condition through the use of combined piezoelectric sensing and novel condition-based interpretation methods. The performance of the developed approach is validated for the detection of bottom-up fatigue cracking through full-scale accelerated pavement testing (APT). The innovative piezoelectric sensors are installed at the bottom of a thin 102 mm (4 in.) asphalt layer. The structure is then loaded until failure (up to 1 million loading cycles in this study). The condition-based approach, used in this work, does not rely on stain measurements and allows users to bypass the need for any structural or finite-element models. Instead, the data compression approach relies on variations in strain energy harvested by smart sensors to track changes in material and structural conditions. Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) measurements and visual inspections were used to validate the observations from the sensing system. The results in this paper present a first large-scale validation in pavement structures for a piezopowered sensing system combined with a new response-only based approach for data reduction and interpretation. The proposed data analysis method has demonstrated a very early detection capability compared to classical inspection methods, which unveils a huge potential for improved pavement monitoring.