Statistical Analysis of Critical Input Parameters in Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide

A number of studies have conducted sensitivity analysis on critical distresses predicted by Mechanistic – Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG,) to investigate the influence of variability in key input parameters. However, the past sensitivity studies have two key drawbacks: i) the analyses are not project specific; thus generalizing the sensitivity of input parameters based on pavement type or other general groupings which can lead to erroneous inferences when applied to specific projects. ii) the analyses vary input parameters one at a time; thus they lack the ability to consider the correlations between different input parameters and the combined influence of the input parameters on predicted distresses. Techniques such as Monte Carlo or Latin Hypercube simulation are useful to study the collective influence of uncertainty in input variables on expected project specific variability, including any correlation among them. This study uses statistical techniques to critically evaluate the effect of project specific input uncertainty on predicted distresses obtained from a simulation based reliability design procedure. The effect and the ranking of input parameters on predicted distresses are evaluated using Tornado plots. The effect of the variability in input parameters on the overall variability in predicted distresses are examined using extreme tail analyses. The results highlight that Tornado plots and extreme tail analysis are useful statistical tools that can assist design engineers to identify the relative importance of input parameters and the effect of their variability on design reliability using the MEPDG under project specific conditions. It will facilitate the decision-making on the choice of highly significant input parameters.

  • Availability:
  • Authors:
    • Thyagarajan, Senthilmurugan
    • Sivaneswaran, Nadarajah
    • Muhunthan, Balasingam
    • Petros, Katherine
  • Conference:
  • Publication Date: 2010

Language

  • English

Media Info

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01328024
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jan 20 2011 11:22AM