Investigating the Impact of Various Climate Change Scenarios on the Pavement Life Cycle Cost

Abstract

Traditionally pavement performance (deterioration) prediction is more focused on impact of vehicular traffic loading and assumes future climate from past climate This assumption may no longer hold due to the climate change events reported by climate scientists in the last century which if neglected may lead to premature pavement structural and functional failure and increased future operations and maintenance costs from the agency’s stand point In this study the impact of various climate changes on the pavement service life and life cycle costs has been investigated in northern and southern regions of Taiwan The historical climate data was collected from two central weather bureaus (CWB) one located in Taipei and the other in Tainan The ground water depth information was also obtained from the department of water resources Two most widely pavement performance models the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHTO 1993) and the new Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) were used in the framework developed for this study to predict the service life of a typical pavement section for city and province roads under Taiwan’s historical and various future climate change scenarios The results of the study showed that the pavement tested for the historical and the various future climates have significantly reduced in service life and increased in life cycle costs relative to the baseline case Thus the framework developed in this study can be used by the highway agencies to adapt climate change in the conventional planning design construction and maintenance of new and existing pavements

Date of Award	2014 Aug 9
Original language	English
Supervisor	Shih-Hsien Yang (Supervisor)