Mechanical-Empirical Pavement Design Guide Applied to Portuguese Pavement Structures

Abstract

This paper describes the characteristics of the new pavement design method developed by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), known as AASHTOWare Pavement-ME®, and presents the results of its application to the flexible pavement structures presented in the Portuguese Manual of Pavement Structures for the national road network. The results obtained clearly show that it is a very useful tool for road engineers not only for designing new pavement structures but also for the analysis of their performance and for efficiently planning maintenance and rehabilitation interventions. According to the characteristics of the case study that was considered, rutting is the most critical distress, since it presents values close to its threshold value of 20.0 mm, a value that is defined in Portuguese Quality Control Plans.