Abstract Manager

The common practice for designing asphalt pavement structures in Quebec has been based on the AASHTO 93 method for over twenty years. This approach was developed to determine the components of a pavement structure to ensure, from a structural standpoint, adequate performance throughout the pavement's expected life. Validating and calibrating a new mechanistic-empirical (ME) method, which is being adopted in the United States, would notably allow a better consideration of Quebec's specific climatic conditions. The current structural design method is limited to dividing the province into two climatic zones (South and North), whereas the new ME method will simulate the effects of hourly temperature distribution, precipitation, sunlight, wind speed, and even the depth of the water table. The ME approach aims to establish links between the characteristics of pavement materials, climatic conditions, and traffic loading to predict the occurrence and progression of various degradation mechanisms. Before implementing this pavement design method, it is essential to calibrate the prediction models to Quebec’s conditions in order to reduce biased measurements often reflecting inadequate correlation between field results and predictions. A local calibration for flexible pavements in Quebec is undertaken in this study using AASHTOWare Pavement Mechanistic Empirical Design (PMED) to ensure accurate predictions under local conditions. The Calibration Assistance Tool (CAT) of the AASHTOware Pavement ME Design has been used to assess the local calibration factors for the performance models, including Fatigue Cracking, Rutting, Transverse Cracking, and International Roughness Index (IRI). A total of 353 flexible pavements under the authority of the Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité Durable (MTMD) has been retained with respect to several criteria. Better accuracy of pavement performance has been yielded based on the goodness of fit between local and national calibration findings. Results show enhanced predictions in the case of Fatigue cracking, Rutting and International Roughness Index compared to the global calibration.