Metodología para evaluación de pavimentos flexibles de vías rurales, estudio caso Vía Barbones-Tendales, cantón El Guabo

Abstract

Road infrastructures at local and global level are a powerful tool to improve the quality of life of people; roads have always played a key role indevelopment, creating an economic potential that favours changes in the social fabric; at local level, state institutions due to their economic limitations do not have methodologies for surface and structural evaluations of flexible pavements to know their current state. For this reason, the interest arises to carry out a methodological proposal for the evaluation of flexible pavements in rural roads and to determine how this evaluation influences the useful life of the pavement in this type of road. The research was carried out on the Barbones – Bajo Alto rural road; located in El Guabo, El Oro, in order to determine its condition and make recommendations for repair or maintenance in order to improve the operational conditions of this road. The evaluation process of the flexible pavement was carried out in two ways, first it was evaluated superficially with the Pavement Condition Index Method PCI, which consists of recording the type of failure, degree of severity of the failure and the density of the same, then proceeded to evaluate the flexible pavement structurally by performing the non-destructive test called Method by Deflectometry, which by means of the deflections obtained the CBR is estimated in terms of the subgrade in order to know the condition of the pavement. It is right to point out that by means of this research it is possible to improve the operational conditions in which the road is found and thus prolong the useful life of the flexible pavements; promoting an adequate level of safety, convenience and comfort to the users who travel on this road.