Lifecycle Performance and Economic Evaluation of Periodic Resurfacing and Condition-Based Pavement Preservation Strategies for Highway Maintenance

Civil Engineering

Effective maintenance planning is critical for sustaining highway infrastructure performance and efficiency. Conventional time-based resurfacing approaches often allow pavements to deteriorate before rehabilitation, increasing lifecycle costs and affecting serviceability. This study compares periodic resurfacing and condition-based pavement preservation strategies using an analytical framework for pavement performance modelling. The methodology integrates traffic and deterioration assumptions, alternative maintenance schedules, and lifecycle performance indicators including roughness evolution, intervention frequency, and maintenance costs. The results demonstrate that maintenance intervention timing significantly influences long-term pavement behaviour. Condition-based preservation strategies maintain pavement roughness largely below 4 m/km International Roughness Index (IRI) across most of the lifecycle and reduce the occurrence of major rehabilitation interventions compared with periodic resurfacing regimes. Lifecycle expenditure analysis further indicates that preventive maintenance strategies can lower cumulative agency maintenance costs by approximately 20-25 percent by avoiding advanced deterioration states requiring structural rehabilitation. The findings highlight the importance of adopting condition-triggered preservation frameworks supported by systematic pavement condition monitoring and lifecycle planning tools to enhance the sustainability and economic efficiency of highway asset management.

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