DALLA FIRMA VIBRO-ACUSTICA ALLE STRADE INTELLIGENTI

Abstract

Road infrastructure monitoring and maintenance need to be improved to satisfy the requirements of the smart cities. This study aims at presenting a solution that can make smarter the management of the roads of the future. The methodology used to carry out this study consisted of an experimental investigation carried out on an asphalt concrete road pavement tested in different structural conditions (holes are drilled to simulate the presence and the propagation of cracks). Loads were generated using a car, and the vibro-acoustic signatures of the differently cracked road pavement under test (i.e., the acoustic responses of the pavement to a given load) were recorded and analyzed in different domains of analysis. Results show that features extracted from the vibro-acoustic signature of road pavements, monitored using the proposed system, can be used to detect the occurrence and the propagation of damages (in this case, with an average model’s accuracy of 61%) and this information can be used to improve the maintenance process by means of innovative P-F curves.