Development of Smart Pavement Design Sensitivity Analysis Software for Asset Management System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Editor, I have received the manuscript " Development of Smart Pavement Design Sensitivity Analysis Software for Asset Management System " to review.

I must say that the manuscript is interesting. However, I have some comments that the Authors should consider to correct some flaws and/or to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Line 39: The specific meaning of ACPA is better to be explained when firstly mentioned in the paper. (American Cement Pavement Association)

Line 40: PCA method is better to be specified. (Portland Cement Association)

Line 84: DOT is better to be explained. (Department of Transportation)

Line108: Why were the input design parameters that affect the pavement thickness the most were identified as a design life, a truck traffic volume, a reliability and a soil support? What about the ESAL (Equivalent Single Axle Loads). It is clear that the loading level will affect the pavement design a lot.

Line109-112: It is better to select the same number of the design life and the reliability. The authors selected two kinds of design life (20 or 40 years) and three kinds of reliability (50%, 80%, and 90%). After doing the sensitivity analysis of the input parameters, the sensitivity of the reliability might be more accurate than the design life. It should be specified/explained why the reliabilities were used directly in the WinPAS system and the reliabilities were adopted to the flexural fatigue equation for concrete pavements and to the resilient modulus of the subgrade for asphalt pavements to get the equivalent reliabilities. Are there any differences of the two kinds of reliabilities themselves, or will this affect the results of the sensitivity analysis?

Line118-121: The determination of the subgrade strength is different in different software packages, thus, they might not be able to be seen as the same index. The k-value is better to be explained.

Line 127-130: The authors said that “When the design life was doubled from 20 to 40 years, StreetPave software increased the thickness by 0.25 inch but WinPAS software increased the thickness by up to 1.25 inches at high traffic level and up to 1.0 inch at low traffic level.” I am wondering whether the data is the results of the concrete pavement or the asphalt pavement, and the authors did not tell the readers where the 0.25 inch and the 1.25 inches come from. Also, the triangle marks in Table 4 is better to be different, i.e., the higher traffic means higher thickness; the higher subgrade strength means lower thickness and in this situation the triangle marks are better to be reversed in the StreetPave Software and the WinPAS Software columns to make it more readable for the readers ( ∆ Subgrade Strength is corresponding to Ñ0.2inch).

Line 117-121 and line 136: The authors said that “each software package uses different terms in determining the subgrade strength; resilient modulus for StreetPave software and k-value for WinPAS software. Four typical CBR values of 3, 5, 7, and 11 were converted to 4,118 psi, 5,842 psi, 7,355 psi and 10,022 psi for StreetPave and were converted to k-values of 100 pci, 138 pci, 167 pci and 209 pci.” However in line136 the authors just said that the low subgrade strength level is 4118psi. The differences mentioned by the authors did not show in the Figures and the corresponding statements.

Line 142-143: The authors just said that the StreetPave recommended the slightly higher asphalt pavement thicknesses than the WinPAS except for a condition with a low subgrade strength and a high traffic. However, other kinds of situations showed that the StreetPave recommended lower pavement thicknesses than the WinPAS, yet the authors did not analysis that.

Line 180-183: The authors said that the pavement design results generated from various pavement design software packages can be saved in the database and utilized later for pavement design and sensitivity analysis. Different pavement design results generated from various pavement packages might not be used together to conduct the sensitivity analysis because the criteria of different pavement packages are not the same. So they might need to be stored into separated modules.

Line 187: SQL is better to be explained. (Structured Query Language)

Line 233: The calculation is wrong, 1.14 should be changed as 1.34 (9.64-8.3).

Line 239-240: It is not clear that authors said that Based on this sensitivity analysis, the effect of reliability is quite significant by increasing the thickness by 1.7 inches. It is the increase of the reliability that can increase the pavement thickness.

Line 250-251: The authors said that when the Soil Strength is tripled to 4350 psi, asphalt pavement thicknesses are increased to 7.3 and 7.6 inches for 12 and 6-inch subbase thicknesses, respectively. It is not “increased” but “decreased”.

Best regards

Author Response

We would like to thank the Associate Editor and the reviewers for their constructive comments and interest in our article. The paper was revised based on the reviewers’ comments and a point by point response was prepared in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

It is a good manuscript. I recommend the publication of this manuscript.

Author Response

We would like to truly thank the Associate Editor and the reviewers for their constructive comments and interest in our article.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper “Development of Smart Pavement Design Sensitivity Analysis Software for Asset Management System” has some merits bur minor revisions are needed to improve the study of the literature and to make it clearer.

Explain better and clearly the objectives

Explain acronyms at the first appearance

Introduce a flow chart summarising the analyses performed.

Highlight and explain the link between life cycle cost, expected life, pavement design/management  (two references are suggested below for your discussion).

Suggested references

Praticò, F.G., Colicchio, G., Astolfi, A., Vizzari, D., Impact of Asphalt Mixture Specification Limits: A Theoretical Analysis (2020) Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, 32 (5), art. no. 04020068, DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0003116.

Peyman Babashamsi, Nur Izzi Md Yusoff, Halil Ceylan, Nor Ghani Md Nor, Hashem Salarzadeh Jenatabadi, Evaluation of pavement life cycle cost analysis: Review and analysis, International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology, Volume 9, Issue 4,2016,Pages 241-254,ISSN 1996-6814, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijprt.2016.08.004.

Author Response

We would like to truly thank the Associate Editor and the reviewers for their constructive comments and interest in our article. The paper was revised based on the reviewers’ comments and a point by point response was prepared in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

                      The paper has been well written and the software capabilities have been well explained. Following is my query

                      What should be outcome of performing the sensitivity analysis? Should it give an idea regarding which pavement design software to select?

                     If possible kindly include a case study to answer the above query. 

Author Response

We would like to truly thank the Associate Editor and the reviewers for their constructive comments and interest in our article. The paper was revised based on the reviewers’ comments and a point by point response was prepared in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx