Pavement Profile Viewer and Analyzer
The Profile Viewer and Analyzer (ProVAL) is a software that was initially developed to provide a means to view and analyze pavement profiles efficiently and robustly, as part of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) smoothness initiative. ProVAL imports, displays, and analyzes the characteristics of pavement profiles from many different sources. ProVAL can analyze pavement profiles using several methods, including International Roughness Index (IRI), Ride Number, Profile Index, California profilograph, and rolling straightedge, and other more complex filters such as Butterworth band pass filters and power spectral density. Version 1.0 of the ProVAL software could import several popular profile data formats, such as ERD1, TxDOT2, and KJ Law3. A new standard profile format (PPF) was also created as a native ProVAL file specification, which proved to be stable, efficient, portable, and upgradeable. The PPF has since been recommended as the basis for the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) draft profile data standard. Workshop material was also developed along with the ProVAL software to provide training in profiling fundamentals and the application of ProVAL.
ProVAL Applications
ProVAL can help State highway engineers, contractors, and quality control managers improve the quality of pavement construction by analyzing a given profile quickly and providing results in a number of formats. In addition, researchers can use ProVAL to analyze large numbers of profiles of virtually any length, frequency of data collection, and number of longitudinal traces.
The following Focus article describes Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) application of ProVAL: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/focus/07jul/02.cfm
Current Status
ProVAL is kept current under a Transportation Pooled Fund Project TPF-5(354), Improving the Quality of Highway Profile Measurement.
Download the current version of ProVAL from the following web site: http://www.roadprofile.com/proval-software/current-version/