Abstract
PURPOSES : One of the main components of road projects funded by the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) is the improvement or rehabilitation of existing pavements. The result is that pavement structures are critical to the success of a project. There is, however, no design standard available at present that reflects a region's specific features including climate conditions and quality of pavement materials. For this reason, a comparative study of the major EDCF borrowers' flexible pavement design standards was conducted. This study led to the proposal of a new method for applying flexible pavement designs which can be used for EDCF-funded projects in Asia. METHODS : The method has been produced by adjusting some input data of the "AASHTO Interim Guide for Design of Pavement Structures" in accordance with certain Asian countries' geometrical features, tropical and subtropical weather, and strength of pavement materials. The Philippine regional factors, having five different grades, have been selected after taking into consideration the amount of rainfall, strength of pavement materials, and characteristics of the Asia and Pacific regions. Structural layer coefficients have been prepared for two different regions according to the geometric difference between Southeast and Southwest Asia. The Philippine and Sri Lankan coefficients have been used for Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia, respectively. CONCLUSIONS : Owing to applying this new method, it was verified that the thickness of the pavement was underestimated by between 11 cm and 16 cm compared with the originally designed thickness. Having discovered that the use of the Korean and American-oriented factors and coefficients is not appropriate for other Asian countries, the new method is expected to enhance the quality of pavement in future projects.
