Pavement performance evaluation and maintenance decision-making in Rwanda

Rwanda is one of the fastest developing countries among the East African Countries (EAC), every year has a great development in different areas. The infrastructure sector has seen significant changes in terms of housing, traffic (such as vehicles and trucks), etc. As a result, traffic loads and pavement ages are both increasing, resulting in a gradual deterioration and decreased functional and structural performance of the pavement. Deterioration of pavement can be attributed to various factors like age, traffic, environment, material properties, pavements thickness, strength of pavement as well as subgrade properties, which affect the mechanical characteristics of a pavement. This research was conducted in order to assess the effect of Truck & Other heavy vehicles (CVPD), California Bearing Ratio (CBR), precipitation, pavement age and thickness factors on deflection and the International Roughness Index (IRI).Then after found which factors could be used in pavement performance evaluation in Rwanda as predictor variables and to assess the correlation between those variables. The results showed that precipitation and CBR are significant predictors for both deflection and IRI on Rwandan flexible pavement performance. Furthermore, CBR is strongly correlated with precipitation. As a result, the climate input precipitation was found to be more important factor for predicting difference pavement performance in Rwanda. Further studies should collect and analyze data on temperature and Pavement Condition Index (PCI) for comparison with the Precipitation and CBR Results to support the greater effectiveness in decision-making and program development for Rwanda pavement performance evaluation. © 2019, Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering. Production and hosting by Springer Nature.