Concrete Pavement Design Optimization Strategies and Impact on Sustainability

Abstract: Pavement design is a critical aspect of pavement type selection, pavement preservation and maintenance, and long-term infrastructure planning. Design tools have improved drastically in the last 30 years, but many designers still utilize outdated methods for concrete pavement design and neglect the benefits of newer, mechanistic-empirical tools. Furthermore, many engineers are not aware of proper best practices for improving and optimizing concrete pavement designs that can help decrease initial costs and also improve long-term performance.

This presentation will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of frequently used concrete pavement design tools. It will discuss the issue and shortcomings of the AASHTO 93 Pavement Design Guide and how it has lead to the development of AASHTO's Pavement M-E Design (PMED) tool and other industry developed tools such as PavementDesigner. The presentation will go through strategies for improving concrete pavement designs such as subbase, base, and subgrade optimization. These strategies are critical to optimized performance as they are not the same as with asphalt pavements. The presentation will also discuss other strategies that are unique to concrete pavements such as mixture and slab geometry optimization. All of these strategies will be introduced to help improve the sustainability and long-term impacts of building and maintaining concrete pavements.