Probabilistic Modeling of the Material Properties of Flexible Pavements for Mechanistic Empirical and Reliability Analysis

The objectives of this research were to model and incorporate the uncertainty in pavement material properties for mechanistic empirical (ME) analysis. The uncertainty in aggregate gradation and volumetric properties in superpave mixture design was considered for hot mix asphalt (HMA). The uncertainty in the properties of the granular materials was modeled in terms of the uncertainties in resilient modulus and degree of saturation using thornthwaite moisture index (TMI) and climatic database. The distributions of HMA dynamic modulus and resilient modulus of granular materials were determined from the distributions of the constituent random variables. Reliability analysis was performed using different allowable cracking. The research concluded that TMI can be used to model the uncertainties in climatic factors and response surface method can be used to incorporate material uncertainties in pavement analysis. The reliability curves developed in the study can be used to determine pavement thickness for a given reliability.