Development of load and resistance factor design format for flexible pavements

The objective of pavement design, just as with the design of other structures, is to provide economical designs at specified levels of reliability. Methods that yield designs with different levels of reliability are undesirable, and over the course of time design approaches in the United States have converged toward the load and resistance factor design (LRFD) format in order to assure uniform reliability. At present the LRFD format has been implemented in concrete, steel, wood, and bridge design specifications. In this paper, reliability concepts are used to illustrate the development of an LRFD format for fatigue design of flexible pavements. It is shown that 10 candidate pavement sections designed against premature fatigue failure according to standard practice using the DNPS86 software do not have uniform reliability It is demonstrated that uniform reliability can be achieved by using the LRFD format. The work reported is based on assumed variations of pavement layer properties and on analytical formulation; field verification was not attempted.