The pavement condition index (PCI) is a numerical index between 0 and 100, which is used to indicate the general condition of a pavement section. The PCI is widely used in

transportation Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...

civil engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

and

asset management Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of all value for which a group or entity is responsible. It may apply both to tangible assets (physical objects such as complex process or manufacturing plants, infrastr ...

, and many municipalities use it to measure the performance of their road infrastructure and their

levels of service Levels of service (LOS) is a term in asset management referring to the quality of a given service. Defining and measuring levels of service is a key activity in developing infrastructure asset management plans. Levels of service may be tied to p ...

. It is a

statistical Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

measure and requires manual survey of the pavement. This index was originally developed by the

United States Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wo ...

as an airfield pavement rating system, but later modified for roadway pavements and standardized by the

ASTM ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is a standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical international standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems and s ...

. The surveying processes and calculation methods have been documented and standardized by ASTM for both roads and airport pavements: * ASTM D6433 - 20: Standard Practice for Roads and Parking Lots Pavement Condition Index Surveys * ASTM D5340 - 20: Standard Test Method for Airport Pavement Condition Index Surveys

Calculation

The method is based on a visual survey of the number and types of distresses in a pavement. First, the type and extent of existing distresses, their severity level is collected. Next, distress density is calculated for each type of distress. The density values are translated into deduct value (DV) and corrected deduct value (CDV) using a set of curves proposed by the ASTM. The ASTM does not include the formulae of these curves, but they are recalculated by researchers. Finally, the value of the PCI is calculated in an iterative process. The result of the analysis is a numerical value between 0 and 100, with 100 representing the best possible condition and 0 representing the worst possible condition. Pavement distress types for asphalt pavements include: * Alligator cracking *

Bleeding Bleeding, hemorrhage, haemorrhage or blood loss, is blood escaping from the circulatory system from damaged blood vessels. Bleeding can occur internally, or externally either through a natural opening such as the mouth, nose, ear, urethr ...

* Block cracking * Bumps and sags * Corrugations * Depressions * Edge cracking * Joint reflections * Lane/shoulder drop-off * Longitudinal and transverse cracking * Low ride quality * Patching and

utility cut A utility cut is a cut and excavation to an existing road surface to install or repair subterranean public utility conduits and equipment. After the utility is installed or repaired, the road needs to be restored which will result in patches on th ...

patching * Polished aggregate *

Pothole A pothole is a pot-shaped depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affecte ...

s * Rutting * Shoving * Slippage cracking * Swelling * Weathering and raveling For relatively small pavement systems, the entire system may be surveyed. For large pavement systems, the process may involve surveying a random or representative sample of the entire system with the following steps: * Divide the total pavement section into sample units (approximately 5000 square feet). * Based on the number of sample units in the total section, a certain number of these units are selected to be tested. For example, if there are 40 or more sample units, 10% are tested. * The type, extent and severity of pavement distress in each section are recorded using the ASTM Standard D 5340 method. * The PCI of each tested sample unit is calculated using the method defined in the standard. In summary this involves calculating the distress quantities and the distress densities for each tested unit. These values are used to determine a deduct value and this deduct value is subtracted from 100 to give the PCI value. * If the surveyed samples are representative of the overall system, the PCI of the pavement system is then assumed to be equal to the PCI of the sampled areas. This condition index can give a good indication of the pavement condition of a network. However, trained personnel are required to complete the complicated survey procedure.

Categorization

The ASTM divides the PCI into seven classes as follows, but in practice a PCI lower than 40 is almost impassable.

Relationship with roughness

PCI is correlated with the performance indicators measuring roughness such as international roughness index (IRI). Generally, a road with a high PCI has a low IRI, and a road with a high IRI has a low PCI. However, this is not always the case. For example, two roads with the same PCI can have significantly different IRI values as a result of having different types of distresses or grades.

References

{{Road types Pavement engineering Airport infrastructure Infrastructure asset management

Calculation

Categorization

Relationship with roughness

See also

References