The dissertation was defended at the public meeting of the Dissertation Defense Council of the Scientific Field of Civil Engineering in the SRA-I Meeting Hall of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University at 1 p.m. on 7 June 2024.
The dissertation investigates the evolution of deterioration in significant national road network surfaces and its prediction. Its objective is to develop a model for evaluating the asphalt pavement deterioration rate on national roads, derived from scenarios of surface condition deterioration analyzed from empirical data, along with forecasting changes in the cumulative pavement condition indicator. The dissertation undertook multiple tasks, including analyzing and evaluating the national road network structure, studying road surface deterioration models and their errors, developing a theoretical model to assess road network deterioration rates, conducting experimental assessments with a 3D pavement scanner of the Lithuanian national road network post-renovation deterioration, analyzing relationships between road surface deterioration and construction class, and compiling and evaluating a regression deterioration model. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, general conclusions, recommendations, and one annex. The introduction discusses the research problem and the relevance of the work, describes the object of research, and formulates the purpose and tasks of the work, scientific novelty, practical significance of the work results, and defended statements. The first chapter of the dissertation presents a literature analysis on the concept of multiple asset management and pavement management systems, various pavement management systems, pavement condition assessment, and deterioration models, pavement condition indicators, and assessment methods. At the end of the chapter, the main tasks of the dissertation are formulated. The second chapter scrutinizes pavement condition indicators and their influencing factors. It delves into historical data concerning road pavement unevenness post-repair. Additionally, it outlines the research plan, methodology, and experimental findings. The third chapter analyzes road surface roughness data acquired post-repair, deriving theoretical values for integration into the PMS post-repair scenarios. It includes a regression analysis of panel data, elucidating relationships between PCI and various qualitative and quantitative variables, assessing their significance, and constructing a deterioration model for the pavement condition index. Three scientific articles were published on the topic of the dissertation: two in scientific journals included in the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science database (Paplauskas & Vaitkus, 2022; Paplauskas et al., 2023) and one in the peer-reviewed material of an international conference (Paplauskas & Vaitkus, 2020). The results of the research conducted in the dissertation were presented at two scientific conferences in Lithuania and abroad.
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