Investigation of ride comfort limits on urban asphalt concrete pavements

It is well known that pavement distress negatively affects the drivers and passengers of vehicles. Many studies report that foremost among these negative effects is the vibrations that form within the vehicle. Ride comfort depends on the human response to vibration and vehicle response to the road. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of pavement condition index on ride comfort and to determine the threshold comfort limits for passenger cars on urban asphalt concrete pavements. The pavement condition index (PCI) was determined for pavement sections subject to different surface distress using the PAVER system. Ride (driving) speeds of 20, 30, 40 and 50 km/h were assessed on the same pavement sections to measure vibrational effects inside the vehicle and on the passenger seat. These measurements were then evaluated using the ISO 2631-1 standard in order to determine the a wz values. Using the logistic regression technique, predictive model that took into account linguistic concepts for estimating ride comfort levels based on PCI values was developed. With the aid of this mathematical model, comfort threshold values were determined for each driving speed within an interval of 0–100 PCI. The study results indicated that increasing driving speed was generally associated with higher PCI comfort thresholds.