Empirical-Mechanistic Method Based Stochastic Modeling of Fatigue Damage to Predict Flexible Pavement Cracking for Transportation Infrastructure Management

Abstract

In the purely theoretical approach of pavement design, percentage fatigue cracking is related to damage in a probabilistic manner according to the Miner's law. Two methods that are currently widely in use are based on assumptions of damage distribution. One method assumes fatigue damage being normally distributed, while the other one assumes fatigue damage being lognormally distributed. Since mechanistic-empirical pavement design and pavement management require precise forecasting of pavement fatigue cracking, much effort should be taken to characterize and predict fatigue cracking in terms of damage distribution. In this paper, we formulate the probability density distribution of fatigue damage of flexible pavements according to the underlying structure of fatigue cracking equations so that pavement fatigue-cracking damage can be interpreted in a more meaningful way. Numerical computation is conducted for a case study. It is found that damage is neither normally nor lognormally distributed. It is therefore recommended that methodology and damage distribution model established in this paper be used in practice to predict damage distribution and percentage cracking so that a better estimation of fatigue cracking can be made.

Análisis de costos de construcción asociados al diseño racional de pavimentos con diferentes modelos de fatiga

“…Rational methods of pavement design are focused on the mechanistic of materials, allowing a theoretical analysis of pavement performance facing load requests, such as traffic, as well as stress induced in the structure due to climatic variations (Valdes et al, 2012;Garnica and Correa, 2004 (Huang, 2004;Garnica and Correa, 2004;Sun et al, 2003;Rodriguez et al, 2013;. Orobio, 2011;Wang, 2011).…”

“…Ambassa et al, 2013;Norambuena-Contreras et al, 2011) can be matched up. According to the general fatigue laws as per the radial deformation at the base of the asphalt layers, it is inferred that (Sun et al, 2003;Behiry, 2012. ): (Reyes, 2003;Khana et al, 2013) Various fatigue laws have been recommended to determine the acceptable limit of the vertical deformation (Table 2) These equations' general form is as follows (Behiry, 2012): Asphalt, 1981) Fatigue law for any type of bituminous mixture Shell, 1978) V !…”

Stochastic Projection-Factoring Method Based on Piecewise Stationary Renewal Processes for Mid- and Long-Term Traffic Flow Modeling and Forecasting

“…The "Guidelines for Traffic Data Program" published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) identifies six applications of traffic forecasting: project selection, pavement design, capacity analysis, safety analysis, air quality analysis, and traffic simulation (AASHTO 1992;Huang 1993;Sun and Deng 1998;Sun, Hudson, and Zhang 2003;Sun and Hudson 2005).…”

“…Short-term traffic forecasting is typically used in traffic operations and management, intelligent transportation systems, incident detection, and emergency management (Ben-Akiva et al 2001;Mahmassani 2001). Mid-and long-term traffic forecasting are often used in transportation planning, structural design, and management of pavements and bridges (Project 2002;NCHRP 2002NCHRP , 2005Sun, Hudson, and Zhang 2003;Sun and Zhou 2005). AASHTO (2004) requires not only long-term traffic count predictions but also long-term cumulative traffic counts by vehicle class (i.e., traffic load spectrum).…”

Quantifying Traffic- and Temperature-Induced Fatigue Damages of Asphalt Pavement

“…However, fatigue failure of HMA is the most critical design criteria in flexible pavement and horizontal strain at the bottom of HMA under vehicle load is the key parameter to address this fatigue failure of flexible pavement [8,9]. Moreover, not only does vehicle load produce horizontal strain at the bottom of HMA, but also temperature variations at the bottom of HMA cause a horizontal strain.…”