Calibration of the CalME Rutting Model Using 2000 NCAT Data

CalME is a software package under development for Caltrans that is intended to help in the evaluation and design of flexible pavement structures. Building on existing design methods, CalME provides an Incremental-Recursive Mechanistic-Empirical (IRME) method in which the materials properties for the pavement are updated in terms of damage as the simulation of the pavement life progresses. The IRME design method incorporates various mathematical models to describe material behaviors and predict structure performances. These models need to be calibrated before they can be used to evaluate performance of different flexible pavement structures. This technical memorandum focuses on calibration of the incremental-recursive rutting model used in CalME when employing data collected during the APT (accelerated pavement testing) conducted in the first research cycle (years 2000–2002) at the NCAT (National Center for Asphalt Technology) pavement test track. It was found that the shift factor in CalME calibrated by rutting data in Heavy Vehicle Simulator tests led to a satisfactory match between calculated and measured rutting performance of the selected NCAT test sections.