Software development for flexible pavement thickness design based on aastho and road note 31

Abstract

Nowadays, road and surface failure has become a critical issue in our country on the flexible pavement which reflects to a bad quality and error during design stage. The thickness design of flexible pavement has become crucial element in the overall efficiency of highway structure system to give a good performance and high serviceability under a traffic loading during the expected design period. The objectives of this study are to develop flexible pavement thickness design software for AASHTO and Road Note 31 by using Visual Basic 6.0. The result comparison between both methods was carried out shown in different of thickness and different percentage of cost evaluations between AASHTO and Road Note 31. This computer software could produce the design thickness of each layer for flexible pavement structure in graphical layout for both design methods. Therefore, the users can easily analyze and compared the result obtained to select the best design alternative between AASHTO and Road Note 31 based on cost and thickness different. The result analysis obtained from this computer software also can be saved and view in a report file to be printed or keep as soft copy for reference in the future. Besides, the result analysis obtained by this computer software is also been compared with the manual calculation (theory) and shown that the computer software has the same and exact result with the manual calculation (theory). Thus, the performance of this computer software was successful tested and validated. Therefore, computer software of flexible pavement thickness design is a very useful tool in highway engineering especially to design the thickness of flexible pavement. By applying the computer program, the design stage can be made in a very short time period of design process and help to minimize the error factor compare to manual calculation or conventional method. Computer software also can give a high accuracy and quality of result for pavement thickness design.