Strategy for an Improved Mechanistic-empirical Flexible Pavement Treatment Design

This report details research undertaken to improve the mechanistic-empirical procedure for pavement rehabilitation and strengthening treatment design included in Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology Part 5: Pavement Evaluation and Treatment Design. The report describes the research needs and provides a comprehensive roadmap for future work. The project methodology included a gap analysis, a literature review covering the priority areas, and identification of the most appropriate approaches to be further developed for the Austroads rehabilitation design framework for flexible pavements. Two primary areas were identified for future improvements of the mechanistic-empirical thickness design approach: developing processes to characterise past and future fatigue damage of existing bound pavement materials developing a method to design asphalt overlays against reflective cracking.  For the practical application of back-calculation tools, the project also developed a method to evaluate existing back-calculation software. The report can be downloaded from Austroads at https://austroads.com.au/publications/pavement/ap-r650-21 after free registration