Reliability-based assessment of deteriorating performance to asphalt pavement under freeze–thaw cycles in cold regions

Accurate deterioration models play a critical role in designing and managing transportation infrastructure. Regular models just consider loading factor and its relative uncertainties. However, climate and environment impacts are not considered or just taken as certain variables. Thermal cracks and moisture distresses are principal distress forms in cold regions, where early damage is more significant than general regions. In this paper, Freeze–Thaw (F–T) cycle test was performed to investigate the impact of the cold climate and moisture resistance on paving mixtures, and the compressive strength and resilient modulus were studied. Then reliability method was applied to analyze the pavement reliability functions with various uncertainties. The analytical results showed that the resilient modulus of asphalt concrete mixture declined under F–T cycles. Consequently, pavement structure capacity was reduced. The results also illustrated that reliability method was capable of accommodating uncertainties in pavement parameters. The sensitivity analysis addressed that F–T cycles had a significant impact on estimating reliability, especially with the large coefficient of variance. The larger coefficient of variance, the faster reliability declined. Reliability analysis results indicate that decrease in variability of F–T cycles can significantly increase the estimated reliability. As a result, F–T cycles with uncertainty do harm to pavement loading capacity, which should not be neglected in actual engineering. This paper also proposes some instructions on simulating pavement performance models.