Article
Calibration of the AASHTO MEPDG for Designing Flexible Pavements in Arizona Conditions
International Journal of Pavements
(2010)
Abstract
The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) includes empirical distress models that have been calibrated using national databases. It is necessary to calibrate these models using local pavement distress data, material properties, traffic information, and for local conditions. In this study, the distress models of fatigue cracking (bottom-up and top-down), rutting and roughness for flexible pavements were locally calibrated using 39 pavement sections in Arizona. Data needed were mostly obtained from the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTTP) program. The calibration (optimization) was performed by varying the local calibration coefficients in each distress model in order to reduce the sum of squared errors between predicted and measured distresses and to set the sum of standard errors to zero. Numerous trial runs of the MEPDG software with different calibration coefficients were made. The Excel Microsoft Solver was used to optimize various calibration coefficients. A comparison was made between the results before and after calibration in order to assess the improvement in accuracy provided by the local calibration. It was found that the models before calibration either under predict or over predict Arizona conditions. One of the major study recommendations is that the Arizona Department of Transportation needs to consider making changes to their pavement management system program if it will ever be of significant use and compatible with the MEPDG requirements. This paper serves as a guide to other highway agencies in their MEPDG calibrations.
Keywords
- Pavements,
- Asphalt
Disciplines
Publication Date
January 1, 2010
Citation Information
Mena I Souliman, Michael Mamlouk, Mohamed El-Basyouny and Claudia E Zapata. "Calibration of the AASHTO MEPDG for Designing Flexible Pavements in Arizona Conditions" International Journal of Pavements Vol. 9 (2010) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mena-souliman/48/