System Reliability Analysis of Flexible Pavements
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 10
Abstract
The uncertainty in material properties and traffic characterization in the design of flexible pavements has led to significant efforts in recent years to incorporate reliability methods and probabilistic design procedures for the design, rehabilitation, and maintenance of pavements. In the mechanistic-empirical (ME) design of pavements, despite the fact that there are multiple failure modes, the design criteria applied in the majority of analytical pavement design methods guard only against fatigue cracking and subgrade rutting, which are usually considered as independent failure events. This study carries out the reliability analysis for a flexible pavement section for these failure criteria based on the first-order reliability method (FORM) and the second-order reliability method (SORM) techniques and the crude Monte Carlo simulation. Through a sensitivity analysis, the most critical parameter affecting the design reliability for both fatigue and rutting failure criteria was identified as the surface layer thickness. However, reliability analysis in pavement design is most useful if it can be efficiently and accurately applied to components of pavement design and the combination of these components in an overall system analysis. The study shows that for the pavement section considered, there is a high degree of dependence between the two failure modes, and demonstrates that the probability of simultaneous occurrence of failures can be almost as high as the probability of component failures. Thus, the need to consider the system reliability in the pavement analysis is highlighted, and the study indicates that the improvement of pavement performance should be tackled in the light of reducing this undesirable event of simultaneous failure and not merely the consideration of the more critical failure mode. Furthermore, this probability of simultaneous occurrence of failures is seen to increase considerably with small increments in the mean traffic loads, which also results in wider system reliability bounds. The study also advocates the use of narrow bounds to the probability of failure, which provides a better estimate of the probability of failure, as validated from the results obtained from Monte Carlo simulation (MCS).
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
AASHTO. (1993). AASHTO guide for design of pavement structures, Washington, DC.
Aguiar-Moya, J. P., and Prozzi, J. (2011). “Development of reliable pavement models.” Research Rep., Southwest Region Univ. Transportation Center, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX.
Alsherri, A., and George, K. P. (1988). “Reliability model for pavement performance.” J. Transp. Eng., 114(3), 294–306.
Ang, H. S., and Tang, W. H. (1984). Probability concepts in engineering planning and design. Decision, risk, and reliability, Vol. 2, Wiley, New York.
Breitung, K. (1994). Asymptotic approximations for probability integrals (Lecture notes in mathematics), No. 1592, Springer, Berlin.
Chou, Y. T. (1990). “Reliability design procedures for flexible pavements.” J. Transp. Eng., 116(5), 602–614.
STRUREL. (2007). “COMREL and SYSREL”, User’s manual, RCP GmbH, Munich, Germany.
Cornell, C. A. (1967). “Bounds on the reliability of structural systems.” J. Struct. Div., 93(1), 171–200.
Darter, M. I. (1976). “Application of statistical methods to the design of pavement system.”, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC, 39–55.
Dilip, D. M., and Sivakumar Babu, G. L. (2013). “A methodology for pavement design reliability and back analysis using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation.” J. Transp. Eng., 139(1), 65–74.
Ditlevsen, O. (1979). “Narrow reliability bounds for structural systems.” J. Struct. Mech., 7(4), 453–472.
Feng, Y. S. (1989). “A method for computing structural system reliability with high accuracy.” Comput. Struct., 33(1), 1–5.
Forrest, W. S., and Orr, T. L. L. (2011). “The effect of model uncertainty on the reliability of spread foundations.” Proceeding of ISGSR (International Symposium on Geotechnical Safety and Risk), N. Vogt, B. Schuppener, D. Straub, and G. Brau, ed., Munich, Germany.
Hong, F., and Prozzi, J. A. (2005). “Updating pavement deterioration models using the Bayesian principles and simulation techniques.” Proc., 1st Annual Inter-University Symp. on Infrastructure Management, Univ. of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Honjo, Y., Suzuki, M., and Matsuo, M. (2000). “Reliability analysis of shallow foundations in reference to design codes development.” Comput. Geotech., (3–4), 331–346.
Huang, Y. (2003). Pavement analysis and design, 2nd Ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Jimenez-Rodriguez, R., Sitar, N., and Chacon, J. (2006). “System reliability approach to rock slope stability.” Int. J. Rock Mech. Min. Sci., (6), 847–859.
Madsen, H. O., Krenk, S., and Lind, N. C. (1986). Methods of structural safety, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Maji, A., and Das, A. (2008). “Reliability considerations of bituminous pavement design by mechanistic-empirical approach.” Int. J. Pavement Eng., 9(1), 19–31.
Mitchell, J. K., and Monismith, C. L. (1977). “A thickness design procedure for pavement with cement stabilized bases and this asphalt surfacing.” Proc., 4th Int. Conf. on SDAP, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Noureldin, S. A., Sharaf, E., Arafah, A., and Al-Sugair, F. (1994). “Estimation of standard deviation of predicted performance of flexible pavements using AASHTO model.”, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, Washington, DC, 46–56.
Rackwitz, R., and Fiessler, B. (1978). “Structural reliability under combined random load sequences.” Comput. Struct., (9), 484–494.
Retherford, J. Q., and McDonald, M. (2010). “Reliability methods applicable to mechanistic-empirical pavement design method.”, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC, 130–137.
Sanchez-Silva, M., Arroyo, O., Junca, M., Caro, S., and Caicedo, B. (2005). “Reliability based design optimization of asphalt pavements.” Int. J. Pavement Eng., 6(4), 281–294.
Sivakumar Babu, G. L., and Srivastava, A. (2007). “Reliability analysis of allowable pressure on shallow foundation using response surface method.” Comput. Geotech., 34(3), 187–194.
Timm, D., Birgisson, B., and Newcomb, D. (1998). “Variability of mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement design parameters.” Proc., Fifth Int. Conf. on the Bearing Capacity of Roads and Airfields, Vol. 1, Norway, Denmark Ministry of Transport, Danish Road Institute, Road Directorate, 629–638.
Veeraragavan, A., and Rao, M. P. (2001). “Application of reliability concepts in pavement maintenance management.” 5th Int. Conf. on Managing Pavements, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Wang, S. S., and Hong, H. P. (2004). “Partial safety factors for designing and assessing flexible pavement performance.” Can. J. Civ. Eng., 31, 397–406.
Yoder, E. J., and Witczak, M. W. (1975). Principles of pavement design, 2nd Ed., Wiley, New York.
Zhao, Y.-G., Zhong, W. Q., and Ang, A. H.-S. (2007). “Estimating joint failure probability of series structural systems.” J. Eng. Mech., 133(5), 588–596.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 10 • October 2013
Pages: 1001 - 1009
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 8, 2012
Accepted: May 20, 2013
Published online: May 22, 2013
Published in print: Oct 1, 2013
Discussion open until: Oct 22, 2013
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.