PROBLEM RAISING: THE QUESTION OF DESIGN PROCEDURES DEPENDING ON THE COMPOSITION OF MIXTURES

Abstract

Different pavement structure design procedures have been carried out since 1960s in Hungary. The main principles of the most recent procedure were laid down in 1992 by Ervin Nemesdy, which was an empirical design guide. Unfortunately only corrections of the original procedure were implemented since then, no fundational improvement was made. In some European countries, in the USA, in Australia etc. Mechanistic-Empirical (M-E) Design Procedures were carried out and were put in practice. These procedures merge the mechanistic principles and the empirical experience of pavement behaviour. The Mechanistic-Empirical approach gives the opportunity to take into account some of the material properties, weather conditions, traffic datas and layer thickness. The technically suitable and cost-efficient pavement structure is calculated by an iteration process. Although with the Mechanistic-Empirical approach we can approximate the real behaviour of the pavement better, mechanistic tests of asphalt mixture can show different results as we expected. This paper lightens these differences, demonstrates what factor should be taken into account in a design procedure and it identifies research fields related to pavement design.

Keywords

• pavement design procedures
• analytic design method
• fatigue calculation
• pavement checking
• mechanistic test
• lifetime calculation