Towards Cost-Efficient Flexible Pavement Design Using Response Surface Models in a Reliability Framework
Recognizing the need for sustainable and long-lasting structures, the probabilistic based designs have been gaining acceptance in pavement engineering community. However, the use of an overall reliability factor often results in the underestimation of the failure probability. On the other hand, the probabilistic techniques discussed in literature are often computationally expensive and tedious to implement. This paper presents an elegant technique to design flexible pavements, in the presence of uncertainties, through adaptive response surface models. The iterative technique is non-intrusive and thus can be extended to spreadsheet tools for simple and efficient implementation by pavement engineers. As increasing levels of reliability is associated with increasing costs, the study proposes a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) formulation for mechanistic-empirical pavement design that minimizes initial investment costs, while meeting the desired level of reliability. The lowest costs are ensured by varying the design parameters i.e. thickness and resilient moduli combinations and adopting the optimum structural design alternative. By considering the estimated costs of constructing the various pavement layers at the design stage itself, the most sensitive input parameter that must be varied (to meet the target reliability at the lowest investment level) can also be identified. The study, thus, advocates the integration of the economic analysis of design alternatives with the Mechanistic-Empirical pavement design procedure in a reliability framework.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AKP30 Standing Committee on Design and Rehabilitation of Asphalt Pavements. Alternate title: Toward Cost-Efficient Flexible Pavement Design Using Response Surface Models in a Reliability Framework.
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Authors:
- Dilip, Deepthi Mary
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 101st Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2022-1-9 to 2022-1-13
- Date: 2022
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 13p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Cost effectiveness; Economic analysis; Flexible pavements; Mechanistic-empirical pavement design; Reliability
- Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Pavements;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01835539
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-22-04338
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 7 2022 5:26PM