University of Twente Student Theses
Developing a tool for integrated assessment of asphalt maintenance measures
Menkveld, S.A. (2025) Developing a tool for integrated assessment of asphalt maintenance measures.
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| Abstract: | In the civil engineering field, the designing and construction of roads is important to maintain efficient and safe transportation networks. Roads play a major role in moving vehicles from their origin to their destination. Not only the construction of the roads is important, but also its maintenance has a significant impact on the quality of the infrastructure. To reduce or prevent asphalt aging processes, effective maintenance must be applied. Nowadays, many factors influence the decision-making process of asphalt maintenance. For example, costs, environmental impact and safety. This research identifies the impact of asphalt maintenance measures on sustainability and costs to support the decision-making process for the municipality Enschede-Losser, aligned with their policy objectives. The tool provides insight into the trade-offs between the integrated impact criteria for different maintenance measures. Its development involves a data gathering process, criteria integration and a structured design approach. First, data is gathered regarding the asphalt mixtures and machinery that are used by NTP for asphalt maintenance. Both traditional and sustainable mixtures are used for different road layers. Next, the Environmental Cost Indicator (MKI) and CO2 emission values are gathered and analysed revealing that sustainable mixtures score relatively better on these criteria than traditional mixtures. Finally, the costs of the asphalt mixtures per ton and the used machinery are gathered. This shows that not all sustainable mixtures are more expensive than traditional ones, depending on their lifespan. The data, sourced from internal documents and Ecochain reports, serves as input for the tool’s calculations. The tool integrates both quantitative (MKI, CO2, costs) and qualitative (safety, availability) criteria. The qualitative criteria can be assessed manually by the user of the tool. The quantitative criteria are assessed by calculations of the tool. First, the total output per criteria is calculated for each measure. This value is converted to an annual value, facilitating fair comparison. The annual values are generalised and given a score between 1 (worst) and 5 (best), to be able to add them up and calculate a final score per measure. The tool is developed in Microsoft Excel and has several design principles that shape its functionality. These are simplicity, flexibility, consistency, transparency and user friendliness. It consists of four main types of sheets. First, the dataset sheets including all the gathered data per criteria. Secondly, the calculation sheets, where the measures can be composed and their total and annual output per criteria is calculated. Thirdly, the ‘fill-in’ sheet, in which the user fills in the project specific characteristics such as the road dimensions and transport distance. Lastly, the dashboard sheet includes the trade off matrices and data visualisation charts to provide a clear overview of the assessment results, enabling users to compare different maintenance measures effectively. The model verification including a sensitivity analysis is performed by slightly adjusting the input parameters to check whether the formulas are correctly implemented and the output changes as expected. The model validation is performed with a use-case by implementing the budget values of a real-life project from NTP. Also, a stakeholder is asked to test the model and validate the design principles. Both the verification and validation imply that the tool generates accurate and reliable results. The relationships indicated by the conceptual model are correctly integrated and the validation accuracy is 87.8%. In conclusion, the developed tool provides a structured and data-driven approach to evaluating asphalt maintenance measures by integrating both quantitative and qualitative criteria. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Programme: | Civil Engineering BSc (56952) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/105432 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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