Mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement design using i3C-me

Mechanistic-empirical (ME) flexible pavement design is now the recommended practice in Canada. Yet, the complexity and the costs associated with the integration of the recent American design method may limit the integration of this approach. The NSERC Research Chair i3C undertook the development of a ME flexible pavement design software as part of its activities. The software, named i3C-me, allows performing ME design, for both structural capacity (using a Linear Elastic Analysis of pavement response) and frost protection (combined Saarelainen-Konrad method), of flexible pavement structures. The objective of the paper is to present and describe the software. This design tool is user-friendly and free and uses three levels of precision depending on the available data, budget and the importance of the project. It also uses seven different modules associated with project identification, design objectives, load characteristics, climate, structure and materials, transfer functions and frost penetration calculations. It includes a fully editable database for the vehicle configurations, material properties, transfer function, etc., therefore the users can add their specific parameters for their local materials or calibrated transfer functions. Among other things, the software is well adapted to the urban context as it can easily consider the effect of vehicle speed and vehicle configuration, such as urban bus.