AASHTO Issues Revised Pavement Design Guide

April 3, 2020

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has released a new publication: Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide: A Manual of Practice, 3rd Edition.

This revised manual provides an overview of the methodology termed mechanistic-empirical or “M-E” pavement design.

Based on engineering mechanics that have been validated through extensive road test performance data, the manual references AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design and M-E Pavement – crafted as part of the AASHTO’s software development program.

Major revisions in the third edition of this manual include:

  • New fracture mechanics-based model for reflective cracking in asphalt overlays over flexible, semi-rigid and rigid pavements.
  • New mechanistic-empirical model for short jointed plain concrete pavement or SJPCP overlays of flexible pavements.
  • New flexible and semi-rigid pavement global calibration coefficients.
  • Addition of non-structural preventative maintenance treatment consideration for flexible and rigid pavements.
  • Addition of five “level 3” default distributions for normalized axle load spectra, known as NALS.
  • Updated climate discussion for Modern Era Retrospective Reanalysis and North American Regional Reanalysis data.
  • Incorporation of crack load transfer efficiency or LTE for flexible pavements;
  • Expanded guidance for creep compliance and indirect tensile strength inputs for asphalt wearing surface layers.

The guide is available from the AASHTO Store by clicking here.

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