The stone pavements: proposal of one methodology for the unevenness evaluation

Road surface roughness is one of the most important parameters for the interaction between vehicles and road pavements as it affects the riding comfort, user costs and the dynamic overloads, which are responsible for vibrations transmitted to the external environment. For this reason, roughness is a main parameter in Pavement Management System (PMS), and it must be frequently monitored. In Italian urban networks, stone blocks pavements are widely used, expecially in city historical centers. However, these pavements may develop high levels of road surface roughness. In current literature, few data are available on stone pavements profile characterization and roughness evolution. There is therefore a need to better characterize the stone pavements roughness and to develop efficient and low cost measurement methods, to allow urban road Administrations to control the road surface roughness within an efficient Pavement Management System. In this paper, a novel low-cost methodology for the road profile unevenness characterization is proposed and the preliminary results of a profile roughness measurement campaign on stone block pavements carried out in the city of Naples are reported.