Over the past decades, new automated techniques were developed in Europe and America to measure rut depth [2]. These techniques have a number of valuable benefits such as convenience; they require fewer personnel; the safety of the involved personnel and the travelling public; and monetary and time savings. Unfortunately, their cost is beyond allocated funds for such a purpose to most of the transportation agencies in the developing countries. Therefore, they use the traditional methods which are slow, disrupt the flow of traffic, and risk the safety of the personnel involved.

The potential accuracy and limitations of using a reasonably priced technique to measure rut depth in the developing countries were investigated by the authors in a previous work [3,4]. The proposed technique utilized close range photogrammetry.

This paper investigates the impact of vehicle speed on the accuracy of rut depth measurement by using close range photogrammetry. Four highway sites were selected and each site was prepared and videotaped by stereo-pair cameras mounted on the back of a vehicle travelling at constrant speeds of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 km/h. The rut depth for each section was determined by using the photogrammetric, traditional, and levelling techniques.

The mean of the absolute differences between the elevation of the points obtained by using the photogrammetric and levelling methods for all sites were 0.325, 0.384, 0.414, 0.458, 0.534, 0.616, and 0.687cm, for the respective speeds of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80km/hr. The corresponding values for the photogrammetric and traditional methods were 0.453, 0.481, 0.508, 0.556, 0.603, 0.679, and 0.765cm. Moreover, the increase in speed from 20 to 80km/h resulted in a decrease in accuracy of rut depth measurement of 50% to 60% for the levelling and the traditional methods, respectively.

1

J.H. Banks, "Introduction to Transportation Engineering", Second International Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2004.

2

K. McGhee, "Automated Pavement Distress Collection Techniques", Synthesis 334, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C. 2003.

3

M.A. Saif, A.M. Ibrahiem, "Measuring Rut Depth Using Close Range Photogrammetry", Umm Al-Qura University Journal of Science - Medicine - Engineering, 20(1), 2008.

4

M.A. Saif, A.M. Ibrahiem, "Mobile Measurement of Rut Depth Using Close Range Photogrammetry", in M. Papadrakakis, B.H.V. Topping, (Editors), "Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Engineering Computational Technology", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 154, 2008. doi:10.4203/ccp.89.154

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