ABSTRACT
A pavement is designed using an appropriate design that considers material properties, climatic conditions, and expected traffic during design life. For pavement structural design, the input variables as generally considered as deterministic. However, in reality the nature of practically all of the input design factors is stochastic. This uncertainty in prediction and natural variations of important input design parameters result in variable pavement performance. The consequences of not considering these uncertainties in the pavement design process are quite serious and one of the main reasons for poor performance of pavements. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate such variability and determine the reliability of the pavement design process. However, the process for estimation of reliability for asphalt pavements is not as simple as it appears and there are several issues with it. This paper discusses about the concepts and issues of reliability application in the realm of pavement engineering.
