Pavement Research
Key goals of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) are to improve the productivity and mobility of the national highway transportation system. To achieve these goals, FHWA must work with industry stakeholders to effectively maintain and expand the existing infrastructure. Pavement is at the core of this infrastructure.
Improving pavement performance is a complex and ongoing challenge. The pavement research teams of the Office of Infrastructure R&D (research and development) are working to address this challenge through a combination of staff and contract R&D. Staff research is conducted in the laboratories of the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. Contract research is conducted by a broad array of consultants, academic institutions, and industry research organizations.
Our Goal
The ultimate goal of FHWA’s pavement research and development is to provide performance-based models and tools to facilitate effective management of the national highway infrastructure. In pursuing this goal, FHWA strives not only to meet current needs of highway stakeholders, but also to identify and address future needs that can be predicted—even if the needs have not yet come to the fore as issues of widespread concern.
Our Work
The work undertaken to achieve FHWA’s pavement R&D goal is organized in three broad and highly interrelated program areas, each managed by one of the three pavement research teams within the Office of Infrastructure R&D:
The Pavement Materials and Construction team seeks to develop improved materials tests, mixture proportioning methods, quality assurance/quality control procedures and specifications, and construction processes to enable reliable as-constructed performance and life-cycle cost prediction at all stages in the pavement management process.
The Pavement Design and Performance Modeling team seeks to develop procedures and processes to enable performance modeling and design selection that optimize pavement performance and life-cycle costs.
The Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) team seeks to understand how and why pavements perform as they do. Through this portion of the pavement R&D program, the team is completing—in partnership with the State highway agencies that own the LTPP test sections—the planned 20-year program of data collection and database development for the LTPP test sections originally established as part of the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP).
The pavement R&D program is conducted within the framework of FHWA’s strategic pavement technology program roadmap (Pavement Roadmap), which has the following overarching goal:
Provide leadership and technology for the delivery of long-life pavements that meet our customers’ needs and are safe, cost effective, and can be effectively maintained.
The Pavement Roadmap establishes five focus areas that support this goal:
- Optimized pavement performance—increase pavement durability and performance and reduce life-cycle cost
- Advanced quality systems
- Enhanced user satisfaction through reduced congestion, improved condition, and safer pavement surface characteristics
- Technical capability building
- Environmental stewardship
These focus areas—collectively and/or individually—contribute to advancement of FHWA’s goals for productivity, mobility, and environmental stewardship.
Learn more about TFHRC Pavements Research
