Expansion of AASHTOWare ME Design Inputs

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) designs pavements with the AASHTOWare Mechanistic Empirical (ME) and AASHTO 1972 methodologies. WisDOT engineers would like to increase usage of the ME design methodology but require additional high-level inputs to increase confidence in pavement structure designs. The ME design methodology can be completed using different material input levels (Levels 1 through 3). Level 1 inputs are preferred because they are determined from laboratory testing instead of material assumptions. Reliable hot mix asphalt (HMA) material inputs are particularly challenging to obtain because of the wide range of expected material properties and the required testing equipment. Ideally, a catalog of material properties from HMA facilities throughout Wisconsin would be available to WisDOT designers to provide accurate estimates, however a catalog of material properties does not yet exist. Therefore, there is a need to create a strategic collection and testing plan of HMA material properties to populate higher level inputs for ME design methodology. Researchers will be asked to create a test matrix to represent material properties of Wisconsin mixtures and execute the approved testing plan. A similar study was completed through the 0092-08-06 WHRP project, but WisDOT material specification changes have resulted in production of mixtures that cannot be adequately represented by those testing results. To avoid this obstacle in the future, researchers will also be asked to develop a strategic testing plan to verify and update future material properties. The primary objective of this research is to update HMA material inputs for the Level 1 ME design methodology and compare them with current WisDOT inputs. Based on this comparison, researchers are expected to recommend a sampling strategy to verify/update HMA material inputs with time. Secondarily, researchers are expected to compare the AASHTO 1972 design method layer coefficients with ME design material inputs. This comparison should consider how the surface layer properties contribute to the overall design structure using each methodology and recommend a new structural coefficient for HMA materials, if warranted.

• Record URL:
  https://wisconsindot.gov/documents2/research/rfp-ffy20-flexible-aashtoware.pdf
• 

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $215000
• Contract Numbers:

  0092-20-03

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Wisconsin Department of Transportation

  4802 Sheboygan Avenue
  Madison, WI  United States  53707
• Project Managers:

  Lyngdal, Erik

• Performing Organizations:

  Applied Research Associates, Inc.

  100 Trade Centre Drive, Ste 200
  Champaign, IL  United States  61820-7233
• Principal Investigators:

  Von Quintus, Harold

• Start Date: 20191001
• Expected Completion Date: 20211001
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Hot mix asphalt; Mechanistic design; Pavement design
• Identifier Terms: AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design (Software)
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Materials; Pavements; Research;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01722040
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Wisconsin Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: 0092-20-03
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Nov 11 2019 5:54PM