LOCAL CALIBRATION OF THE 2002
PAVEMENT OF DESIGN GUIDE
Local calibration can be carried out by identifying a set of representative
pavements, developing the distress, materials, traffic, and climatic
database for these pavements, and verifying the 2002
Pavement Design Guide against these local pavements. This process
will identify whether or not any local calibration needs to be performed.
In summary, if a State or Province plans to do local calibration,
the calibration will be done with a set of different pavements
other than the LTPP sections that were considered in the global models.
In that case, the State or Province will need to develop a database
for design inputs, such as local material properties, and the
State or Province must either do this independently or pool resources
with other States or Provinces that have similar conditions.
the 2002 Pavement
The following example demonstrates how the LTPP data was
used to develop and calibrate the design input libraries and the
mechanistic-empirical models of the 2002 Pavement Design
Guide. The local development and calibration process can be performed
similarly.
Report No. NCHRP Project 1-37A
- During the development stage, LTPP data were used extensively for a variety of critical terms:
- Establishing national default vehicle class distributions.
- Establishing national default axle load distributions for single, tandem, and tridem axles.
- Establishing other default inputs such as axle spacing, number of axles per truck class, and 24-hour
percentages of truck traffic.
- Developing materials-aging models.
- Characterizing pavement material properties.
- Verifying joint opening/closing models.
- Verifying/validating Enhanced Integrated Climatic Models using the SMP data, especially the in-situ
moisture contents and frost depth data.
- During the calibration state, LTPP data were used to calibrate the following materials:
- IRI prediction models for flexible pavements, AC overlays of flexible pavements, and AC overlays of
rigid pavements.
- IRI prediction models for JPCP and CRCP.
- Fatigue-cracking models (both top down and bottom up) for flexible pavements and AC overlays.
- Rutting models for flexible pavements and AC overlays.
- Thermal cracking models for AC pavements.
- Transverse fatigue-cracking models for JPCP (both top down and bottom up), JPCP unbonded overlays,
and restored JPCP.
- Joint faulting models of new JPCP, unbonded JPCP overlays, and restored JPCP.
- Punchout model of new CRCP and CRCP unbonded overlays.
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