Enhancing MEPDG distress models prediction for Saudi Arabia by local calibration

Abstract

During the development of pavement design methods, the MEPDG is evolved by NCHRP 1-37 project. This reason led the roadway agencies to implement the MEPDG. To implement MEPDG, the local calibration is necessary to increase the accuracy of distress models used in MEPDG to predicted pavement performance, because these models were derived depending on the conditions of the United States. This study aims to the calibration of MEPDG based on the conditions of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The rutting and IRI models were calibrated using an optimization approach embedded in MS Excel (namely, solver optimization). The study results reveal that the adjusted coefficients are appropriate for this study because the new coefficients of the rutting models reduced the bias from 4.90 to 0.03 and SSE from 317.68 to 61.71 while the new coefficients of the IRI model reduced the bias and SSE from 0.44, 0.31 to 0, 0.03 respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Mechanistic-empirical pavement design Guide (MEPDG)
• performance prediction models
• local calibration
• Riyadh

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding and supporting this research through the initiative of Graduate Students Research Support (GSR).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deanship of Scientific Research, King Saud University [grant number graduate student research].