Use of Information Technologies in Road Engineering: Detecting Damage Causes and Demonstration of a Thermal Line Scanner Analysing Tool

Pavement performance and durability depend not only on the properties of the mixture constituents, mixture and structural designs, and production processes, but also on the quality of pavement construction. Several factors, such as variations in environmental conditions, interruptions in material delivery, and human errors, can affect the precision of paving procedures, potentially compromising the desired road quality. Consequently, the integration of advanced technologies during paving operations, such as the Infrared-Thermal-Line-Scanner (IRTL) and Intelligent-Roller-Compactor (IRC), has proven beneficial for the road industry. This study first aimed to identify the impacts of paving operations on road quality in terms of volumetric and stiffness properties. In the second phase, visual inspection outcomes (i.e., surface cracks) were analyzed more thoroughly to determine potential correlations between paving operations and detected defects. The initial findings indicated that, regardless of paving temperature and compaction level, both volumetric and stiffness results met the required criteria. However, the results of the latter phase revealed that compaction at the crack locations began at low temperatures, emphasizing the importance of maintaining an appropriate compaction temperature window to prevent crack formation.Additionally, the SuPAR group at the University of Antwerp is developing the SuPave tool, which analyzes asphalt paving temperature data to detect cold spots, calculate thermal segregation, and identify risk areas across the pavement mat. It computes key metrics, such as the Thermal Segregation Index (TSI), Differential Range Statistics (T10, T90, DRS), and total paver idle time. The tool also generates heatmaps, trend plots, and GPS-based spatial maps to visualize temperature distribution and paving performance.