MOVEDVDC – Modelling of ageing and damage for pavement lifetime assessment – MOVEDVDC

Maintenance of road infrastructures represents a considerable socio-economic challenge in a context where budgets of asset managers are increasingly restricted. To optimize the maintenance of these infrastructures, it is necessary to develop monitoring and diagnosis methods to estimate reliably their residual lifetime. It is one of the objectives of the French “Road National Observatory -

The MOVEDVDC project aims at the characterization of residual mechanical properties of bituminous materials in base layers, and their evolution over time, two inputs which are necessary to the calculation of pavement lifetime, and pavement maintenance solutions. The important targets are:
- To define a methodology for assessing ageing and damage of bituminous materials, based on the analysis of materials sampled on field and on
studies on materials aged in laboratory conditions,
- To define ageing indicators used for the assessment of materials lifetime,
- To propose, form these studies, models to predict mechanical properties of aged materials (in particular complex modulus and fatigue resistance)
and their evolution, to be implemented in pavement lifetime calculation. This is an important output for the dissemination of the project.

MOVEDVDC complements the National project DVDC (Pavement lifetime – www.dvdc.fr) which is a collaborative research project launched in June 2016, aiming at the development of tools and methods for the evaluation and maintenance of old pavements. The DVDC project brings together nearly forty partners of the road infrastructures sector: private companies, asset managers, research organizations. MOVEDVDC adresses one of the most important technical and scientific challenges identified in the DVDC project, which is the assessment of ageing and damage state of bituminous materials.

The research program of MOVEDVDC is structured around 6 main tasks: (i) coordination, (ii) selection and characterization of experimental sites, (iii) analysis of binder behaviour, (iv) analysis of mixture behaviour, (v) modelling and calculation of pavement residual lifetime and (vi) dissemination. It is realized by a consortium constituted of 4 academic organizations (ESTP, IFSTTAR, INSA Strasbourg and University of Limoges) and 4 private companies (Eiffage Infrastructures, Eurovia, Malet, Total), which bring together strong scientific skills, a strong link to the field, and important laboratory testing facilities.
Two major outputs are expected from this project, which will constitute important inputs for the establishment of operational technical guidelines shared with all the stakeholders:
- A methodology for the characterization of aged and damaged bituminous materials, at binder and mixtures scales,
- A new approach for describing the mechanical performance of these aged materials in the calculation of pavement lifetime and design of pavement
maintenance solutions. This approach will constitute a contribution for the future guidelines on pavement maintenance which will be a deliverable of
the DVDC project.
The project will also lead to the development of a more advanced model for the description of the fatigue behaviour of cracked or damaged materials.