| dc.description.abstract | Regular revision of road design manuals is a recommended practice in
pavement management, and Kenya has recently completed a review of
hers. The outcome of the process is an enhanced but empirical manual
with rigid models. The reviewers (BCEOM egis, a geotechnical consul
tancy) however strongly recommended the use of interactive mathemati
cal models of a mechanistic-empirical (ME) nature in road design for the
country in future, since ME models more accurately predict pavement
performance than the rigid ones currently in empirical manuals. Using
ME models in road design in Kenya now is a challenge since the climatic
models in ME design require inputs of hourly intervals, yet most weather
stations keep only daily interval records. This study investigated the pos
sibility of adapting the existing ME mathematical models for use in road
design in Kenya. We achieved this by rigorously analyzing the differ
ential equations and other equations contained in the ME mathematical
models. Simulating hourly weather data from daily data was applied
for some weather elements, while adaptation of the governing equations
in the models to take inputs of daily intervals was done for the others.
Secondary climatic data obtained from the Kenya Meteorological Depart
ment and theWeatherbase websites were used as inputs into the models.
The study established that with suitable adaptation, the existing climatic
data can be used as inputs into the models with little loss in the relia
bility of their predictions, hence Kenya can successfully embrace the ME
pavement approach. The findings of this study could serve as an initial
step towards the realization of the reviewers' recommendations on use of
ME mathematical models over empirical manuals. | en_US |
