Research Chair in Municipal Pavement Rehabilitation

Municipal roadways represent a major part of the infrastructure assets of Quebec cities. The accelerated aging of road networks, combined with growing budget constraints and the effects of climate change, requires municipalities to do more with less, while maintaining acceptable performance levels.

Rehabilitation practices often remain empirical, relying on limited diagnostics, standardized solutions, and significant outsourcing of design. Current tools are sometimes ill-suited to the realities of municipal roadways—particularly when they incorporate recycled materials and are subjected to harsh northern conditions (freeze-thaw cycles).

The Research Chair in Municipal Pavement Rehabilitation, in collaboration with several partner municipalities in Quebec, aims to develop scientific, practical, and transferable approaches to improve the assessment, design, and implementation of rehabilitation projects, with a focus on sustainability and the circular economy.

The student or postdoctoral fellow may focus their project on one of the Chair’s three research areas:

Area 1 – Infrastructure Assessment and Diagnosis

Improving the assessment of the structural condition of roadways before and after rehabilitation by utilizing destructive and non-destructive testing, image analysis, and artificial intelligence for automated data processing and anomaly detection.

Area 2 – Decision Support and Design

Develop decision-support tools to compare different rehabilitation scenarios based on technical, economic, and environmental criteria, incorporating recycled materials and local climatic conditions.

Area 3 – Construction and Quality Control

Develop on-site verification methods tailored to municipal construction sites, analyze existing recycling techniques, establish technical criteria for cost estimates, and monitor experimental sections.

Regardless of the focus area selected, the project will combine a literature review, experimental work in the laboratory and/or in the field, as well as an applied component conducted in close collaboration with municipal partners.