Effect of variation of the average daily volume and traffic growth rate on flexible pavements performance

Abstract

Pavement design, initially based on empirical methods, has been improved and, currently, there is a tendency
to replace these methods by mechanistic-empirical ones. This new methodology uses detailed information on
traffic, climate and pavement structure to obtain accurate performance predictions, providing a better design.
In this study, it was performed a sensitivity analysis of flexible pavements to investigate the effect that the
variation of annual average daily traffic (AADT) and traffic growth rate has on structural pavement responses.
Therefore, simulations were done using two computer programs, MEPDG and AASHTOWare Pavement ME
Design, whose results indicated that the pavement has sensitivity to both variations that were studied (AADT
and traffic growth rate), demonstrating higher deterioration values when the traffic growth rate was nonlinear. It
was also concluded that the difference between sensitivity values obtained by both programs was insignificant.