Evaluation of MEPDG flexible pavement design using pavement management system data: Louisiana experience

Abstract

This paper presents a recent study on using the mechanistic–empirical pavement design guide (MEPDG) design software (version 1.1) to evaluate the performance of typical Louisiana flexible pavement structures and compared it to the existing pavement performance data available in the pavement management system. The pavement performance indicators evaluated in this study include fatigue cracking, rutting and International Roughness Index (IRI). In addition to comparing the measured and predicted mean performance, the predicted pavement distresses at certain reliability design levels were also compared with the field variation of distresses extracted from a number of selected projects. The overall comparison results between the measured and predicted pavement distresses showed strong dependency on the pavement structure type considered in this study. Generally speaking, the MEPDG rutting models tended to over-predict the total rutting for Louisiana flexible pavements, whereas both fatigue cracking and IRI models in the MEPDG seemed to be adequate for most projects selected. Finally, a special optimisation approach was introduced to determine a set of preliminary local calibration factors for the MEPDG rutting models for two types of flexible pavements in Louisiana.

Keywords:

• MEPDG
• PMS
• local calibration
• rutting
• fatigue cracking
• IRI

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Louisiana Transportation Research Centre (LTRC) and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD).