Evaluation of Common Maintenance Methods for Flexible Pavements

Problem statement: With the increasing use and awareness of pavement management systems and the growing emphasis on asset management of pavement infrastructure, it is important to strengthen the maintenance components of these systems and particularly the preventive maintenance component. Iraqi Roads don’t receive an effective and proper maintenance during their service life until they reach the state of major failure that requires rehabilitation. Roads in Iraq are being lost. Approach: In this study, a study of the status of maintenance methods for road pavements in Iraq with special reference to flexible pavements was presented. For this purpose, open and closed questionnaires were executed in Baghdad to investigate the status of road pavement maintenance in Iraq. Road maintenance offices as (Ministry of construction and Housing, State Corporation for Roads and Bridges, Amanat Baghdad, Project office,) were included in the questionnaire to arrive at the level of maintenance and techniques followed to maintain paved road in Iraq. Results: The interviews carried out reveal that maintenance in Iraq has secondary importance, apparently with no special budget allocated for such important works. In addition the maintenance methods and techniques followed do not comply the developments and modern techniques. Conclusion/Recommendations: Poor and miss-management of maintenance works and activities leading to delays and accumulation of failure in the highway network that require unusual expenditures to repair and maintain the accumulated damages. Shortages in resources allocated for maintenance works and this leads to the diversion of significant portion of the allocated fund for maintenance works toward purchasing of new, or additional equipment to be used for the construction of new roads. It is strongly recommended to design a planning system for management pavement maintenance of road network in Iraq and develop a particular failure criterion for roads in Iraq.