Validation of a Novel Sensing Approach for Continuous Pavement Monitoring Using Full-Scale APT Testing

The objective of this paper is to present a novel approach for the continuous monitoring of pavement condition through the use of combined piezoelectric sensing and novel condition-based interpretation methods. The performance of the developed approach is validated for the detection of bottom-up fatigue cracking through full-scale accelerated pavement testing (APT). The innovative piezoelectric sensors are installed at the bottom of a thin 102 mm (4 in.) asphalt layer. The structure is then loaded until failure (up to 1 million loading cycles in this study). The condition-based approach, used in this work, does not rely on stain measurements and allows users to bypass the need for any struc…