Improvement of Michigan climatic files in pavement ME design.

Details

• Creators:
  You, Zhanping ; Yang, Xu ; Hiller, Jacob ; Watkins, David ; Dong, Jianping
• 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:
  [PDF - 6.14 MB ]