Updating Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) Spectra in PaveM

Weigh-in-motion (WIM) devices measure and record highway vehicle axle loads. The data they collect include axle loads and spacing, vehicle classification and gross weights, and travel speed. These WIM data are used for pavement design, management, and performance studies. In 2016, there were 123 WIM devices operating on sites throughout the California state-owned highway network, one of the densest and best maintained in the United States. The University of California Pavement Research Center (UCPRC) has studied California’s WIM data with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) since 2007 to advance mechanistic-empirical (ME) pavement design procedures. Previously, the UCPRC completed the first analysis of the WIM data collected from 1998 to 2003 to discover similarities in axle load distributions at the WIM sites and then grouped them using cluster analysis to generate default traffic inputs for pavement design software. For this research, the UCPRC processed WIM data collected from 80 California WIM-measuring sites from 2004 to 2015, identified the axle load distribution for each site, and updated the earlier grouping using hierarchical cluster analysis. A decision tree was developed to classify WIM data into five WIM axle load spectra, which have been implemented in the Caltrans pavement management system database, PaveM, to generate truck traffic inputs in the CalME and Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) pavement design software tools used by Caltrans for asphalt and concrete pavement design, respectively.