UPDAPS-Flood: a mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement analysis tool to evaluate the effect of flooding events on flexible pavement performance

Abstract

Flooding can cause considerable damage to flexible pavements and negatively affects their performance over time. This study aims to evaluate the flooding effects on the flexible pavement performance and the potential resiliency of the pavement network through a mechanistic-empirical (ME) pavement analysis approach. The Unified Pavement Distress Analysis and Prediction System (UPDAPS) programme, which includes ME analysis models, was used to develop the UPDAPS-Flood programme. A total of 7,655 flexible pavement sections were extracted from the Highway Pavement Management System (HPMS) database in three United States regions. Finally, the resiliency of the pavement network to flood events was quantified using the loss of pavement service life based on the international roughness index (IRI). The results showed that flooding has the highest impact on rutting performance, followed by IRI and fatigue cracking. It has been found that a proper drainage system can reduce the flooding impact by a factor of two. The predicted pavement performance was found to be very sensitive to the coefficients of the rutting model, which brings the need for further studies to re-calibrate the rutting prediction model at higher moisture content levels.