Development of Thickness Design Tables for Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement Based on the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide.

Version 1.0 of the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (M-E PDG) program was released in May 2007. For an engineer to design a specific pavement using this program, he or she needs to assume a trial design, and run the program repetitively until a pavement design is identified that satisfies the performance criteria for the given problem. The performance models in the new program were developed and calibrated based on a national database of field pavement performance data. For states seeking to implement the M-E PDG, the developers of the design guide have recommended that the models be calibrated to local conditions. Given these considerations,Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) researchers and engineers with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) conducted a cooperative effort to establish and characterize field test sections for the purpose of compiling a database of materials, geometric and traffic-related design variables to verify the predictions from the M-E PDG program, and perform local model calibrations as warranted. Researchers conducted sensitivity analyses to investigate the impact of a broad range of M-E PDG input variables onthe performance predictions and to identify critical variables for developing design tables based on the M-E PDG. From these efforts, researchers and FDOT engineers established thickness design tables for jointed plain concrete pavements (JPCP)s.