Life cycle analysis of Guanxi freeway pavement maintenance interval

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is widely used as an environmental impact over the full life cycle of a system. This paper incorporates LCA including impacts that occur throughout the construction, operation, and, maintenance of pavement. The historical freeway database was collected to analyze the pavement life cycle responsible for substantial energy and resource consumption. The analysis was done for Guanxi section as part of Taiwan National Freeway no.3 to compare a long-cycled and short-cycle maintenances. Calibrated HDM-4 and GaBi used to simulate total life cycle conditions. Road network, climate, vehicle fleet, and traffic data were collected and analyzed. Two aspects including Pavement Condition Index (PCI) and International Roughness Index (IRI) were considered for the simulations. The result shows that short-cycle is more acceptable for maintenance in Guanxi section. Environmental analysis by Global Warming Potential (GWP) shows that short-cycle maintenance contributed the smallest GWP with 0.02% up to 0.67% lower than another maintenance type. However, Taiwan focus on increase the level of service of the freeway by setting the minimum IRI value 1.7 m/km. Likewise, this study validates that recent maintenance use in Guanxi section is better than the previous long-cycle, while reduce the maintenance frequency to 1.5 years' might could increase the effectivity of short-cycle maintenance.