Details:

Creators:
You, Zhanping ; Yang, Xu ; Hiller, Jacob ; Watkins, David ; Dong, Jianping
You, Zhanping ; Yang, Xu ; Hiller, Jacob ; Watkins, David ; Dong, Jianping Less -
Corporate Creators:
Michigan Technological University
Subject/TRT Terms:
[+]
Data Collection Data Quality Flexible Pavements Mechanistic-empirical Pavement Design Rigid Pavements Sensitivity Analysis Weather And Climate Weather Stations
Publication/ Report Number:
RC-1626
Resource Type:
Tech Report
Geographical Coverage:
Michigan
Corporate Publisher:
Michigan. Dept. of Transportation
Abstract:
Climatic inputs have a great influence on Mechanistic-Empirical design results of flexible

and rigid pavements. Currently the state of Michigan has 24 climatic files embedded in Pavement ME

Design (PMED), but several limitations have been identified. First, five of the climatic files cannot be

directly utilized because of an entire month of missing data. These missing data should be filled properly.

Second, the 24 weather stations in Michigan are not uniformly distributed geographically, with some

regions poorly represented. It is desirable to add new weather stations for these gap regions. Third,

existing climatic files for Michigan have not been updated since 2006. A longer climatic data length can

better represent the long-term climatic conditions, so it is recommended that the data length of existing

climatic files be extended. This study aims to improve the climatic files in Michigan for PMED. To

achieve this goal, quantity and quality checks of the existing 24 climatic files were conducted to find out

the potential missing data and erroneous data. Procedures for filling the missing data and correcting the

erroneous data were proposed as well. The sensitivity of PMED design performance to weather station

variation in Michigan, the five individual climatic variables, and the depth to ground water table was

investigated. Two traffic levels (heavy and medium) and two pavement types (flexible and rigid) were

used for the sensitivity analysis. Typical traffic load spectra, pavement structures and materials in

Michigan were incorporated as well. Additional weather data from the Automated Surface Observation

Systems (ASOS) and Michigan Road Weather Information System (RWIS) were investigated as

potential sources to add new weather stations in gap regions and to extend the existing climatic files.

Quantity and quality checks on both data sources were conducted to evaluate the feasibility of application

in PMED. It was found the ASOS data and the existing climatic data are from the same historical data

records. Fifteen additional weather stations were added to fill the gap regions using the ASOS data. In

addition, all the existing climatic files have been extended from Feb. 2006 to Dec. 2014. Finally, climatic

zones based on pavement design results and multiple climatic variables for Michigan were preliminarily

investigated. Fifteen climate zones were established for Michigan based on pavement surface

temperatures and distress predictions.


Format:
PDF
Funding:
2013-0067
Collection(s):
US Transportation Collection
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:7b7e25f58d2e94b8d7ca4396377dc64f89f27bfba80b33d7d4c92d911f2e4afc
Download URL:
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/29499/dot_29499_DS1.pdf
File Type:

Supporting Files

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