Capace, Brunella (2019) NDT application in transport asset management: Qa/qc performance specifications in pavement construction and maintenance. PhD thesis, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy.
Abstract
Nowadays, in Transport Asset Management, there is the need to identify measures to guarantee high levels of performance over time. The application of non-destructive techniques, through high-efficiency equipment, turns out to be an optimal solution to ensure the quality of transport infrastructures. Asset Management takes into account the importance of monitoring the performance characteristics of the transport infrastructures and QA/QC performance-based contracts specifications in order to guarantee the preservation of environmental, social and economic resources, as well. This study consists of two parts of research activity: in field tests and numerical simulations. The first part consists of in situ experimental activities to investigate both road and rail transport infrastructures. The tests have shown the versatility of high-performance instruments, such as FWD, LWD, GPR and ARAN, in railway monitoring, in the evaluation of ballast conditions and sleeper/ballast interaction, and also in the reuse of volcanic ashes that after stabilization can be used in road subbase layers. The high-efficiency equipment allow a faster execution of the tests with the possibility of a higher number of measurements, the combination of several instruments at the same time with a continuous mapping of the infrastructures, performance measures and a significant cost reduction. In the second part, the study focuses more specifically on road pavements. Considering several flexible pavements pulled out from the Italian Catalog, numerical simulations of FWD tests were carried out in the hypothesis of multilayer elastic theory with the aim to develop performance-based criteria and specifications for QC of pavement construction work. The results allow to estimate effects of structural deficits in the perspective of future performance and life cycle cost analysis in order to quantify penalties to restore expected higher maintenance costs.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | pavement engineering; railway track; non-destructive testing; performance-based specifications; falling weight deflectometer; ground penetrating radar |
| Index terms: | performance specification, mapping, flexible pavement, field test, cost reduction, performance-based, performance-based specification, guarantee, railway track, specification, penalty, performance measure, asset management, transport infrastructure, monitoring, in-situ, stabilization, performance-based contract, interaction, estimate, maintenance cost, non-destructive testing, efficiency, life cycle cost analysis, multilayer, pavement construction, numerical simulation |
| Subjects: | asset management, building construction, behavioral psychology, transportation engineering, tendering, spatial and geospatial analysis, infrastructure engineering, contractual arrangements, economic analysis, infrastructure and transport systems, regulatory law, performance measurement, contract structure, financial management, performance management, economics, specialized materials and systems, contractual condition, professional development, modelling and simulation, financial and cost management, data collection methods, control systems |
| Topics: | Construction Materials, Information Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Site Management, Contract Administration, Procurement, Engineering Principles, Quality Management, Legal Issues |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here