Comparison of AASHTO-93 İLE AASHTOWare pavement me design methods for the pavement design in Türkiye and the economic analysis

Within the scope of this thesis study, some data obtained with the help of the Turkish Highways Flexible Pavement Design Guide, based on the AASHTO 1993 method, used for flexible pavement design in Türkiye, were calculated with AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design. In these calculations, 4 different cities located in 4 different climate zones were used. In this study, first of all, wearing, binder and bituminous base layer thicknesses were determined using the Turkish Highways Flexible Pavement Design Guide for 3 different road classes, 3 different annual average daily traffic (AADT) and 3 different subgrade strength conditions (total of 3x3x3 = 27 different scenarios). Then, performance analyzes were carried out with AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design using the climate data and other design parameters of each city for these 27 different design scenarios (4x27 = 108 design scenarios in total). For the climate data nedded include hourly sunshine duration, wind speed, temperature, precipitation and relative humidity values ​​of the selected cities in the last 5 years were requested from the General Directorate of Meteorology of the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, and these data were transferred to the program. Other data were selected from the Turkish Highways Flexible Pavement Design Guide, and for data that we did not have or were not used in pavement design in our country, calculations were made by selecting the 3rd data level from the program. According to the results obtained in line with these calculations, the most appropriate and economical pavement thicknesses were determined by changing the selected traffic density, the type of material used, the reliability coefficient or other parameters, and finally using AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design, and the effect of the changing thicknesses on the pavement material cost was examined. Within the scope of this study, the applicability of AASHTOWare Pavement ME, which is a new method in highway pavement design and whose use has been studied in the USA and Canada and will soon be used entirely in highway pavement design, has been tested in our country's conditions. At the same time, the effect of climatic data on pavement thicknesses for different climatic regions in our country was analyzed using AASHTOWare Pavement ME. In order to fully implement the AASHTOWare Pavement ME design method in our country, the missing data have been determined and practical suggestions have been presented regarding the steps to be taken for the use of this method and how the missing data should be obtained.