On a Simple Method for Estimating International Roughness Index Using a Profilograph

In this paper, we derive a simple method for estimating the International Roughness Index (IRI) of a pavement profile using data collected by a computerized profilograph. The algorithm presented herein achieves this by estimating the standard deviation of the point-to-point slope of the pavement from the profilograph's recorded data and then mapping this to an expected IRI via a theoretically justified equation which we derive. We demonstrate the performance of this approach via numerical simulation and analysis.