Challenges in Incorporating Functional Considerations into Pavement Design

Abstract

The prevailing practices of pavement design today typically handle the structural and functional design separately in a fragmented piecewise manner. In meeting the modern day requirements to provide efficient, safe, quiet, durable and environmentally sustainable pavements, there is a need to adopt a holistic approach in pavement design to address the structural and functional requirements in an integrated manner. This paper first identifies the aspects of current design practice that needs to be improved, and then proposes a framework for pavement design to address both the structural and functional requirements in an integrated systematic approach. As an illustration, this paper presents a pavement design framework to cover both the structural design of a pavement to satisfy structural requirements for a design traffic loading, and functional design that addresses the following aspects: the minimum skid resistance required for safe wet-weather driving, the maximum tire-pavement noise permitted for control of traffic noise level, as well as the considerations of environmental sustainability.