Use of Deflection and Distresses in Pavement Performance: Does Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide Miss Something?

Although the new Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) is still in the review stage, it represents a major improvement on its predecessors. One of its advantages is the comprehensive coverage of the environmental, material, and traffic parameters, as well as their interactions. However, several issues need to be investigated as a part of the review process. This paper will address two that are related to the pavement performance component of MEPDG: the coverage of the performance indicators and the interaction among the distresses used in MEPDG to estimate pavement service life. Important questions should be asked, such as: do the MEPDG performance indicators provide enough coverage of pavement performance? Are all the main aspects of pavement performance covered in MEPDG? Is a pavement section with only one distress expected to have the same life/performance as another section with the same level of this distress, plus other distresses? Does the existence of more than one distress accelerate deterioration? If MEPDG was used to evaluate two designs and predicted that one design would develop a certain set of distresses, while the other section would develop another set of distresses, which of these two designs would provide better performance and be most cost-effective? Through a discussion of relevant previous studies and the results of more specific analyses performed on the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) historic performance data of two Specific Pavement Study (SPS) sites in New Jersey, this paper tries to address these questions and evaluate the potential impacts of the results.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: CD-ROM
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 22p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 85th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01031513
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 06-0762
  • Files: TRIS, TRB
  • Created Date: Aug 23 2006 2:15PM