The calculation of pavement fatigue and its reliability
- CARRETERAS MAGAZINE NO. 211 - JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017
Rafael L. ÁLVAREZ LORANCA
Of Counsel
Ángel MONTES JIMÉNEZ
Gestión de Firmes y Pavimentos, OHL Concesiones
ABSTRACT
When pavement fatigue is being calculated, a series of assumptions are carried out which have their own degrees of uncertainty.
The method for counting heavy traffic, the passing of said traffic onto equivalent axes, the fact that the fatigue law used represents the real behaviour of the pavements or whether the future evolution of traffic is going to be as predicted, are just some of the many unknowns that exist in the process.
In many countries, particularly in America, where Spanish civil engineers are working more and more, we need to take reliability into account in the process, which is a sort of safety coefficient adopted in said process in order to be able to meet initial expectations.
In this article the intention was to bring attention to this subject and its application.
KEYWORDS:
Pavement, Sizing, Reliability, Fatigue, Multi-layer model.
