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Local calibration of the MEPDG for flexible pavement design.
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2011-10-01
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[PDF-5.97 MB]
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Edition:Final report; July 2006-Aug. 2009.
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Abstract:In an effort to move toward pavement designs that employ mechanistic principles, the AASHTO Joint
Task Force on Pavements initiated an effort in 1996 to develop an improved pavement design guide. The
project called for the development of a design guide that employs existing state-of-the-practice
mechanistic-based models and design procedures. The product of this initiative became available in 2004
in the form of software called the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). The
performance prediction models in the MEPDG were calibrated and validated using performance data
measured from hundreds of pavement sections across the United States. However, these nationally
calibrated performance models in the MEPDG do not necessarily reflect local materials, local
construction practices, and local traffic characteristics. Therefore, in order to produce accurate pavement
designs for the State of North Carolina, the MEPDG distress prediction models must be recalibrated using
local materials, traffic, and environmental data. The North Carolina Department of Transportation
(NCDOT) has decided to adopt the MEPDG for future pavement design work and has awarded a series of
research projects to North Carolina State University. The primary objective of this study is to calibrate the
MEPDG performance prediction models for local materials and conditions using the data and findings
generated from this series of research projects.
The work presented in this report focuses on four major topics: (1) the development of a GIS-based
methodology to enable the extraction of local subgrade soils data from a national soils database; (2) the
rutting and fatigue cracking performance characterization of twelve asphalt mixtures commonly used in
North Carolina; (3) the characterization of local North Carolina traffic; and (4) calibration of the flexible
pavement distress prediction models in the MEPDG to reflect local materials and conditions.
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