Consideration of Climatic Conditions in Pavement Design

Climate strongly influences the bearing capacity and the stiffness of pavements. Therefore climatic effects are very important in a modern pavement design procedure. In order to optimize a pavement construction and to increase its long-term performance, the specific local climate has to he considered in the design process. The Austrian analytical design procedure for asphalt pavements is an example of considering the climatic conditions in the design calculation. The consideration of climatic parameters is based on the seasonal temperature distributions in the asphalt layer. Design temperatures are classified referring to the local Austrian climates. The paper presents the results of latest research at the Institute for Road Construction and Maintenance at Vienna University of Technology, which mainly aims at an improvement of the Austrian pavement design procedure. For the covering abstract see ITRD E118503.