Pavement design

Every graduate student will complete an individual study project related to pavement design. This project should include more than one of the items listed and other items as desired: review of literature, numerical analysis, assessment of the current state of practice, design methods, suggestions for improvement supported by appropriate analysis, and/or case studies as closely related as possible.  The project deliverable is a paper written in the Transportation Research Board (TRB) format, which is provided at the link below. Follow formatting for the TRB annual meeting, not the Transportation Research Record (TRR). The only exception to the formatting requirements is to add a Table of Contents after the title page.  The formatting guidelines take some time to digest, which is part of this year’s exercise.  A key element is the paper written cannot exceed the maximum length requirements. Note these papers are not going to be submitted to TRB, or anywhere else, this is only for learning purposes.

http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/am/infoforauthors.pdf

Topic

This semester there are two topic options.  There is some independent thought required for either, and there are also some specific requirements.

Option 1: AASHTO 1986 or 1993 Empirically Based Investigation

The primary objective is to document how layer coefficients (i.e. ai terms such as a1, a2, a3…have been developed). These terms are the most important inputs to determining a pavement’s available structural capacity based on the materials used. Three documents must be referenced as described below, alongside additional sources as needed (only referencing these three documents won’t result in a good grade, they are just to get the process started).

• NCAT Report 14-08

• Florida Study BDV31-977-27

• A study where the Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) was used to determine in-situ ai terms

the words between 5000-6000