Guide for the mechanistic-empirical design of new and rehabilitated pavement structures: materials characterization: is your agency ready?

The implementation of the Guide for the Mechanistic-Empirical Design of New and Rehabilitated Pavement Structures (Design Guide) as a standard design practice will also require significant changes to pavement design procedures, testing procedures and equipment, traffic data input, climatic data input, performance criteria, and others. The Design Guide performance models are calibrated using data from the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) Program. To maximize the benefits of the Design Guide, agencies will need to embark on an implementation process to ensure that all of the input parameters are acceptable and practical for their location. The Design Guide provides a hierarchical methodology with three levels of design ranging from Level 1 (detailed project specific inputs) to Level 3 (default regional inputs). This paper presents the material characterization input and testing required for use in the Design Guide.