Evaluating the benefits of accelerated pavement testing
Abstract
South Africa, like many other countries, is facing challenges regarding the optimal utilisation
of taxpayers’ money to the benefit of the country. Research, transportation infrastructure
research in particular, has its unique challenges as it competes with very sensitive public
spending needs such as health, education and safety. Very often research does not receive
its rightful share in government’s investment in public services. The downstream effects of
neglecting the upkeep and maintenance of our road infrastructure is rising logistics costs
and social disbenefits due to a lack of acceptable access to facilities such as hospitals,
schools and shops.
Due to the pressure on the available funding for research, it is increasingly more
important to justify research spending and the success of continued governmental support
depends on the impact of the research. The development of the first South African electric
passenger vehicle, the Joule, is an example of a product that was never commercially
available and investment in its development was ceased in 2012. Research utilising
Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT) machines are expensive in comparison with mere
laboratory testing. However, they are reliable tools to assess the durability of full-scale road
structures in a short period of time and to avoid costly early failures. The ability to measure
the impact of implementable research stemming from APT-related research is becoming
more important given the backdrop above.
This thesis is centred around the development of a robust methodology to measure
the success and impact of research from a particular type of APT device, the South African
designed Heavy Vehicle Simulator (HVS). Research with the HVS started in the 1960s and is
still continuing in South Africa and in many other countries.
With the use of well-established tools and models the author developed a
methodology to measure the impact and benefits of APT. This methodology was tested on a
case study of a sizable pavement rehabilitation project in California.
Realistic and defendable results were derived and were within industry acceptable
norms. It is also realised that the quantification of benefits through the deterministic
analyses done in this thesis is narrative and does not capture the true value of implemented
research. Non-quantifiable, qualitative, indirect or downstream benefits should also be
recognised for their positive societal contribution.
It must be stressed that, although the methodology developed as described in this
thesis mainly focused on benefit determination of APT-related research in California, it is
generic by nature and can easily be adopted in South Africa across various spheres of
research impact measurement.