The Arkansas Chapter-American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA) hosted a successful Hands-On AASHTOWare Workshop with 18 attendees. Representing the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) Roadway Design Division, the Asset Management Section, and the on-call engineering consultants, the attendees participated in a hands-on workshop last week that covered AASHTOWare’s:
Pavement M-E software
PavementDesigner—the concrete & cement industry’s multi-program pavement thickness design platform
Alan Meadors, Promotional Director-AR said, “These are the only people who design pavements for the State of Arkansas’ projects.” He added that the small group size allowed for plenty of discussion about the concrete pavement design and the use of the new generation digital tools. He initially proposed the training to ARDOT after reading about a similar workshop in Florida (in ACPA’s CONCRETE PAVEMENT PROGRESS). Like a lot of state highway departments, ARDOT uses AASHTO 93, so this first-ever workshop gave the design professionals an opportunity to see example problems and to try the design tools firsthand.
Eric Ferrrebee, Technical Services-ACPA led the training on PavementDesigner for a group of representatives from municipalities and counties. He also presented the M-E design to the ARDOT.
Alan Meadows and Brent Burwell, Executive Director-OK/AR ACPA, facilitated question and discussions, some of which focused on key differences among the design resources.
Alan said, “Eric showed what PavementDesigner does, and the reason why, although it’s AASHTO 93-based, it has many more features. He also set the stage for discussions about Pavement M-E and why it’s better than AASHTO 93. He used example problems, including a major project that resulted in 11-in-thickness designs with ’93.”
Alan added that the same design when run through PavementDesigner and ME were 8-1/2 in. and 9 in. respectively. Alan explained the takeaway was “AASHTO ’93 is too conservative, and we could have been more competitive with M-E”.