Institute for Transportation

About the research

Iowa has three classes of public roads: state primary highways, county (secondary) roads, and city streets. Among these, Iowa county roads serve rural Iowa transport needs for assuring a pubic road connection (i.e., to local access roads) for every parcel of land and for serving as conduits that collect the flow of people and commodities and channel them to and from towns and terminals (i.e., farm-to-market roads).

Complex pavement structures make it difficult for Iowa county engineers to estimate the current structural capacities of their in-service pavements for developing cost-effective decision-making strategies in managing, maintaining, and rehabilitating county pavement systems. This challenge creates a need to develop the reliable and easy methods or tools for use by Iowa county engineers in their routine pavement analysis/design/asset management practices as well as supporting effective communication related to pavement needs both with the public and with elected officials.

The primary objective of this research is to develop an easy-to-use pavement structural analysis tool (for Iowa county roads) for use by county engineers in routine pavement analysis/design/asset management practices to provide effective communication regarding pavement needs both to the public and to elected officials.