In a study published in the Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part B: Pavements, researchers Anushka Khachi and Sushobhan Sen investigate how environmental factors dictate the structural performance and service life of jointed plain concrete pavements (JPCPs). Daily and seasonal temperature changes generate complex, nonlinear temperature profiles within concrete slabs, causing thermal curling, equivalent linear temperature differences (ΔT), and self-equilibrating eigenstresses that ultimately trigger cracking and fatigue damage from vehicular loads. While traditional mechanistic-empirical pavement design requires analyzing decades of historical hourly weather data—a highly time-intensive process—this study proposes utilizing a Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), an innovative approach that condenses multiple years of diverse weather data into a single, computationally efficient year.
To evaluate the efficacy of this method, the authors used the Sandia method to generate TMYs for 24 Indian cities across two separate multi-decade periods: 1962–1991 and 1992–2021. By applying a one-dimensional finite-element model to compute temperature profiles, they compared the resulting ΔT and eigenstresses from the condensed TMYs against full historical datasets for both top-down and bottom-up cracking. Their statistical findings indicated that while TMYs accurately capture mean climatic conditions, they fail to account for extreme weather values. Crucially, the noticeable differences in calculated pavement stresses between the two historical periods highlight that engineers must carefully select their climate data timeframes to properly account for the shifting realities of climate change in modern infrastructure design.
Read the full paper here: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/JPEODX.PVENG-1929