Database Support for the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG)

The Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) developed under the NCHRP 1-37A initiative is a significant advancement in pavement design. However, it is substantially more complex than the 1993 AASHTO Design Guide and it requires significantly more inputs from designers. Some of the required data are either not available or are stored in locations not familiar to designers. In addition, many data sets need to be pre-processed before their use in the MEPDG procedure, such as Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) traffic data. Currently there is no satisfactory software available to accomplish these challenges. Therefore there was a need to study the MEPDG data requirements and produce a centralized database system to aid designers. This report describes the development of a comprehensive database to store and process climate, traffic, material, and performance data for the state of Arkansas. The tasks undertaken were to: (1) identify all the required inputs and analysis parameters; (2) develop algorithms and procedures to locate the available data sets, pre-process raw data, check data quality, and import the traffic and other data sets to the designed database tables; (3) implement database algorithms for uploading, data checking, and generating the require data files for the MEPDG software; and (4) develop a user friendly software interface, PrepME, to generate the required input files for the MEPDG software. The PrepME software will assist all data preparation and improve the management and workflow of the MEPDG input data and be a critical tool for calibrating and implementing the MEPDG.

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