About the research

Pavement systems are vital elements in the infrastructure network for all societies. The performance of pavements is greatly affected by environmental conditions including moisture and temperature and their interaction. Today most pavement design methods use simplified empirical approach to incorporate climate into the design. A new approach, the Mechanistic-Empirical (ME) pavement design procedure, is based on mechanistic modelling of the behaviour of the pavement structure and predicts the pavement deterioration through performance relationships based on long term laboratory and field testing. The ME approach can better take into account the real traffic loading as axle load spectra instead of converting empirically the loads to equivalent single axle loads. Further can climate be incorporated in a much more realistic way as the analysed period is divided in small time steps with different climate conditions. This provides a more realistic estimation of pavement deterioration and can therefore predicts the distress development as a function of time that can be used in application involving life cycle cost analyses or maintenance planning, comparing different alternatives in the design process or to foresee the effect of climate change on the road network. The main objective of this research proposal is develop a ME design and performance tool for pavement structures that realistically can predict the degradation of pavement structures in cold climate regions.

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