PAVEMENT PERFORMANCE MODELS FOR THE STATE OF SANTA CATARINA (BRAZIL)

The Highway Department of the State of Santa Catarina, located in the South of Brazil, is implementing a Pavement Management System (PMS) for its 3,100 Km of paved roads. A great amount of data was obtained in 1990 and it has been analyzed for the last six years. The methodology used for developing both functional and structural pavement performance models, as a function of the pavement age or the number of standard axle load applications (N), for the pavement network of Santa Catarina, is presented. The dependent variables considered in this research are: IGG (rating index recommended by the Federal Highway Administration of Brazil - DNER), QI (roughness quarter-car index), maximum deflection, cracked area and rut depth. Considerable differences of predictions made by the models developed in this study and those made by some models found in the literature are described.