The Surface Picture of Non-Reinforced Concrete Pavements During Its Usable Lifetime as a Decision Basis for Maintenance

The performance of road surface is the first and main indicator of information of the condition of the road. For some singular damages in-depth analysis is not necessary; for these an instruction for an appropriate maintenance measure is possible. However, by area-wide recurrent or systematic damages causes are important in order to get a decision about appropriate maintenance measures. Some systematic damages themselves give information about their causes, in some cases one can use additional informations –for example the age of the road when the damages were first seen - to get information about causes, but some damages need further investigations. We could identify damages that were clearly due to specific construction methods used in the 20ies to the 40ies, 50ies to the 60ies, 70ies to the 80ies (different in East- and West Germany) and from the 90ies of the last century up to now. Damages which are detected too late can cause the surface to deteriorate much faster and result in considerable economic losses. Due to this fact we suggest high-resolution detecting of damages, this means the limit to detect the crack width will be 0.2 mm. Today we work on standardization of damage record and interpretation methods and precision of surface pictures.