Pavement preservation is the practice of selecting and applying maintenance activities in order to extend pavement life, enhance performance, and ensure cost effectiveness. Pavement preservation methods should be applied before pavements display significant amounts of environmental distress. The long-term effectiveness of different pavement preservation techniques can be measured in terms of life extension, relative benefit, and benefit-cost ratio. Optimal timing of pavement preservation means that the given maintenance treatment is applied so that it will extend the life of the roadway for the longest possible period with the minimum cost. This document examines the effectiveness of chip seal treatment in four climatic zones in the United States. The Long-Term Pavement Performance database was used to extract roughness and traffic data, as well as the maintenance and rehabilitation histories of treated and untreated sections. The sections were categorized into smooth, medium, and rough pavements, based upon initial condition as indicated by the International Roughness Index. Pavement performance of treated and untreated sections was collectively modeled using exponential regression analysis. Effectiveness was evaluated in terms of life extension, relative benefit, and benefit-cost ratio. The results of the study verified the assumption that treated sections performed better than untreated sections. The results also showed that the life extension, relative benefit, and benefit cost ratio are highest for sections whose initial condition is smooth at the time of chip seal treatment. These same measures of effectiveness are lowest for pavements whose condition is rough at the time of treatment. Chip seal treatment effectiveness showed no correlation to climatic conditions or to traffic levels.

Crack sealing is considered one of the least expensive and cost effective maintenance activity used on pavements. In some cases, crack sealing suffers from premature failure due to various material, environmental, and construction issues. A survey that was conducted as part of this study showed that the highest sealant failure year occurring on the second year. Therefore, any attempt to increase the sealants’ service life by addressing and improving the sealant properties and their resistance to failure will benefit the effectiveness of this treatment.

The goal behind this study was to evaluate the potential improvement in performance of hot applied sealant material commonly used in the Phoenix area, and evaluate the performance of using a neat binder modified with crumb rubber (at 5 and 10% by weight of binder) as a low-grade sealing material. The sealants was also modified with crumb rubber at 2.5, and 5% by weight fo the sealant. Six ASTM tests were conducted for the comparison. These tests are the Standard Penetration Test (SPT) and Cone Penetration Test (CPT), Resilience Test, Softening Point Test, Brookfield Viscometer Test, and Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR).

The results showed that adding only crumb rubber to a neat binder for its potential use as a crack sealant is inadequate to meet the specifications expected for sealants. However, the modification of the sealant with crumb rubber showed some benefits, such as increased elasticity and decreased temperature susceptibility. A crumb rubber content of 2.5% by weight of the sealant was recommended.