Structural Capacity-Based Framework for Pavement Construction Quality Assessment

Transport infrastructure constitutes an essential component of the built environment, supporting urban accessibility, economic activity, and the long-term functionality of cities and developed areas. The quality of newly constructed pavements is traditionally assessed through compliance with construction specifications, such as layer thickness, material properties, and compaction requirements. However, these parameters do not directly quantify the influence of construction deviations on long-term pavement structural performance. This paper presents a structural capacity-based framework for pavement construction quality assessment that evaluates construction quality according to its expected impact on pavement service life. The proposed methodology integrates ground-penetrating radar measurements, core sampling, laboratory testing, and mechanistic structural analysis to determine the actual structural capacity of the as-built pavement expressed as the allowable number of Design Axle Loads. Based on these results, the Pavement Construction Quality Index (PCQI) is introduced to quantify the combined effects of systematic and localized construction deficiencies. To prevent severe localized defects from being masked by area-weighted averaging, the Critical Local Defect Indicator (CLDI) is proposed as an independent acceptance criterion. The sensitivity parameters of the PCQI formulation were calibrated using mechanistic analysis and HDM-4 deterioration modelling. The proposed framework was demonstrated through a real pavement reconstruction case study and further examined using Monte Carlo simulation to investigate its numerical behaviour over a broad range of construction non-compliance scenarios. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology provides a continuous and technically consistent evaluation of pavement construction quality while enabling practical engineering interpretation of different quality levels. The framework offers a structured quantitative decision-support tool for pavement acceptance based on structural capacity rather than solely on compliance with construction tolerances, thereby supporting more reliable management of transport infrastructure as part of the wider built environment.