An expert system for the dimensioning of flexible carriageways

Abstract

The use of expert systems in civil engineering and especially in road construction has become a necessity due to the structure’s specificity in dimensioning, which is completely different from other structures. The parameters involved in road structure dimensioning are multidisciplinary in their values and behaviors; the road structure is complex and composed of heterogeneous materials, and its behavior is unpredictable due to the nature of the soil, the influence of climate, and different loads it supports. This expert system proposes different thickness, stress, and strain solutions by comparing them with the allowable values based on different mechanical models and formulates the methods and data sheets and then provides choices of body composition for the road based on the new version of the Algerian pavement catalog (2003). This tool is organized in the following forms: (1) rules derived from the experiences of professionals in the field. For our case, these rules are drawn from one side on the catalog of new pavements (version 2003) and another on a set of theoretical and practical method. (2) The property of GURU to call external programs of course that it is compatible. This property will help us to automate some models of flexible pavement sizing “Boussinesq Model, Westgaard Model, Odemark Model” with the Dev C++ language “which is a recent version of C”. (3) The Algerian method outlined in the catalog.