Local calibration of cracking models of MEPDG for Ontario's flexible pavement

The AASHTO Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) introduces a pavement design method which uses both the mechanistic analyses and empirical models to predict pavement distresses and performance, which needs to be calibrated to local conditions and engineering practices based on local pavement performance data. This thesis focuses on the local calibration of fatigue (both bottom-up and top-down) and thermal cracking models in MEPDG for superpave flexible pavements on Ontario’s highways. Simulations were run in the software, after developing a calibration database of Ontario’s provincial highway and the predicted data is compared to the observed data. Significant difference is found in the comparisons which need to be minimized by calibrating the distress models. A new regression model is used to optimize the calibration parameters by minimizing the standard deviations of the residuals between the predicted and observed distresses. The challenges encountered and concluding remarks developed during the local calibration process are discussed. Keywords: Local Calibration, Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), Cracking Models, Fatigue Cracking, Thermal Cracking, superpave