Risk-Based Calibration of Road Sag Vertical Curve Design Guidelines on Undivided Highways
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147, Issue 10
Abstract
Safety in highway geometric design is one of the main goals to be achieved. However, deterministic design criteria do not provide information concerning the risk associated with the design outputs proposed. To yield consistent safety levels, the sag vertical curve design model on undivided highways was calibrated using a reliability-based framework, which allows one to incorporate the uncertainty associated with the model variables. The sag curve design model contemplates the features of vehicle front lighting systems to compute the headlight sight distance (HSD), which must be equal to or greater than the stopping sight distance (SSD). A dataset of 34,238 case studies was generated. Each case study was associated with two values of the risk level, designated as the probability of noncompliance (), one per driving direction. A Monte Carlo simulation was selected to calculate the values of . Through a series of interpolating surfaces of the cloud of points, contour graphs and calibrated charts were depicted. The paper provides a new methodology to verify, design, and compare sag vertical curves, evaluating the risk level with the .
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 16, 2020
Accepted: Apr 28, 2021
Published online: Jul 16, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 16, 2021
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