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Improvement of Climate Data for Use in MEPDG Calibration and Other Pavement Analysis

Project Details
STATE

GA

SOURCE

TRID

START DATE

09/01/16

END DATE

01/01/19

RESEARCHERS

Stephan A. Durham; Bora Cetin; Charles Schwartz; Barton Forman; and Leela Sai Praveen Gopisetti

SPONSORS

Georgia DOT

KEYWORDS

Climate effects, Ground-based weather station (GBWS), Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), ModernEra Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), Pavement analysis

LINKS

Project webpage

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Project description

This study compares the predicted distresses of asphalt concrete (AC) and jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP) using four different climate data sources: (1) ground-based weather station (GBWS) data, (2) the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data, and (3 and 4) the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) versions 1 and 2 (MERRA-1 and MERRA-2) data. The results indicate that pavement performance predictions generated using these data showed disagreement among some of the climate data sources, especially for MERRA-2. Comprehensive diurnal and time-series analyses of the raw climate data found significant disagreements in the percent sunshine data.
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