Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long-term reliability of infrastructure performance is a critical element in fulfilling the Government of Canada strategy to finance highway construction and renewal through raising private and public capital. Therefore, improving the resilience and sustainability of surface transportation infrastructure is a strategic priority for the Canadian economy, and a critical requirement for the safety and security of all Canadians. Over the past decade, the mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide and its implementation software Pavement ME, are being increasingly applied for design and life cycle analysis that are based on fundamental material properties, mechanistic structural responses and verified field performance. These tools have started to replace traditional design methods that are based on an empirical approach.The transition to mechanistic-empirical pavement design requires a substantial level of effort to establish material, traffic and distress databases, and to develop appropriate performance and damage models for the various components. Several Canadian transportation agencies have deferred plans to implement mechanistic-empirical designs until the appropriate requisite databases and models are established. Some agencies, including Manitoba, are exploring the new mechanistic design tools using only default input values that may not be fully responsive to local conditions.The purpose of this Discovery research is to accelerate the local calibration of material databases and to generate high-quality performance models to present an optimized and validated design tool that can be implemented in Manitoba and also adapted to other regions. The work will examine the sensitivity of predicted distresses to individual design inputs in order to assess the reliability of the procedure, and to justify the allocation of resources to additional data collection or laboratory testing. The research will build on the recent findings by the applicant and his research team, for the Manitoba Department of Infrastructure, the City of Winnipeg, and the Yukon Department of Public Works, which produced locally-calibrated material inputs for asphalt concrete and unbound granular materials.The Discovery research will generate fundamental knowledge, and develop design tools to benchmark and model the performance of local materials and distresses more accurately. These tools are critically-needed to support the heavy construction industry, a major sector of the Canadian economy that operates in a highly competitive knowledge-based environment both in Canada and internationally.The research will facilitate exceptional graduate training of HQPs, and will introduce undergraduate students to a research-intensive environment. The trainees will make original research contributions, and acquire highly-desirable analytical and practical engineering skills.