As part of a recent study of ?composite pavements,? including as-built pavements with a portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement overlaid with an asphalt concrete (AC) surface layer, researchers at the University of Minnesota have examined the effect of climate on pavement performance, and the effect of climate file generation using the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide. This paper details the effort to design and test an asphalt-over-concrete (AC/PCC) composite pavement for 610 locations across the United States using the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) version 1.0. While results support the general notion of environmental effects on pavement performance, the performance prediction was found to contain inconsistencies in terms of predicted transverse cracking in the PCC layer. These inconsistencies are attributed to climate data, and they include the use of stations with incomplete data. The researchers conclude that the climate database available to the MEPDG should be cleansed of incomplete or questionable climate data files to ensure accurate transverse cracking prediction in AC/PCC. Otherwise, the presence of this questionable climatic data can only adversely affect performance prediction.
Abstract