Application of Digital Image Analysis for Pavement Degradation Assessment

Pavement health monitoring is an important part of transportation engineering. In USA, we have a huge network of highways and local roadways. To ensure a comfortable and safe journey, regular pavement health assessment is mandatory. A good portion of budget is allocated every year for pavement health monitoring and maintenance. Pavement degradation evaluation is expensive and sophisticated computer operated equipments are used which are currently available. Besides, researchers are working hard to make this evaluation process simple with minimum cost without altering the safety issue. My research topic is pavement degradation assessment by using image analysis Automated digital cameras are widely available which are capable of capturing good quality images of any object. The information can be used for pavement health assessment. In current research, digital images of pavements are used to understand skid resistance property of the pavement. Digital image can be analyzed in MatLab to observe the information distributed among pixels (picture element). This information can be used to identify the change in pavement roughness. New pavements are constructed as rough surface to provide sufficient roughness to prevent skid and drainage during critical weather condition. During its service life, along with other distress, the rough surface transforms into a smooth surface due to friction with wheel. It happens mostly on wheel path. During wet weather condition the polished surface can be dangerous as it prevent drainage and can cause hydroplaning. Location that need repair work can be located by providing the roughness information of that specific location. In the current study optical reflection property of rough surface will be used. Pavement roughness comes from macro texture (0.5mm to 20mm texture depth and 0.5mm to 50mm texture width) and micro texture (0.001 to 0.5 mm depth and 0.5 mm or less texture width). The theory was developed by Dr. Saumya Amarasiri (Graduate student of USF) under Dr. Gunaratnes (CEE) supervision. The theory was developed for assessing only concrete pavement. In the formulation, both specular and diffuse reflection property is used by using BRDF (Bidirectional reflection distribution function), a widely used concept in computer graphics application (Amarasiri et. al. 2010). In the BRDF, the amount of light that will be reflected from a point on a surface can be evaluated in a finite domain. In addition, for a fixed lighting condition and camera position, it is possible to calculate is intensity of the image for every location in the selected domain. MatLab can be used for the necessary computation and model the synthetic image. The theory and the synthetic images were verified by testing laboratory specimens in controlled environment. My research will extend the work to field level. My goal is to use the theory for both concrete and asphalt pavement in the network level. In the field we have various factors that change the roughness and the color in the asphalt pavement. In the developed theory the color of the surface was considered as constant. In the current research, the theory will be modified to be applicable in the field condition. I strongly believe, my research finding will have significant contribution in the pavement industry.