Calibration of fatigue and rutting distress models for non conventional asphalt concrete materials

One of the most used tool for pavement design is the AASHTO Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (M-E PDG) which is a very powerful pavement design tool but it includes empirical distress models calibrated only for conventional bituminous materials. Nowadays non conventional asphalt concrete materials as porous asphalt concrete for wearing courses, modified asphalt concrete and cement-bitumen treated materials are often used in flexible and semirigid pavements. The implementation of these materials in the M-E PDG tool requires the calibration of the distress models based on experimental data from in-service pavements or laboratory test results. In this paper the calibration of the M-E PDG Asphalt Concrete Fatigue and Asphalt Concrete Rutting models is presented for the three type of non conventional materials mentioned above. The results are presented in terms of calibration procedure, resulting calibration factors, caveats and accuracy of the calibrated functions.