Structural Pavement Design According to the Russian Method: the Effects of Climate Change in Continental and Subarctic Zones

The following master¿s thesis project has been developed within the Erasmus+ program in the Russian Federation and outlines the results of a series of experimental activities carried out at Tomsk State University of Architecture and Building. The objective of this study is to investigate climate change effects on road pavement design in areas characterized by continental and subarctic climates. The impact of different phenomena such as temperature and precipitations increase, as well as frost depth reduction, has been widely discussed by many climatologists and plays a key role in cold regions pavement assessment. The experimental activities, performed in the laboratories of the Road Construction Faculty, were focused on two reference sites, Tomsk and Salekhard, both located in the Siberia region. A series of test sections equipped with special sensors allowed the determination of temperature and volumetric water content of the subgrade soil, which eventually enabled the validation of the measured data with models available in the literature. The project has been developed with the purpose of studying how road pavement design will be influenced fifty years hence in terms of layers thickness and leading failure criteria; to accomplish this, the following steps have been carried out: materials characterization and sensors calibration, modeling of the climatic data (temperature and frost depth), analysis of projections of climate models, and pavement design according to the Russian standards. Overall, results are coherent to what was stated in other climate change-related studies and showed non-negligible effects in terms of pavement design, especially when taking into account precipitations increase. Since to date, no official English version of the abovementioned Russian regulations is available, a personally realized translation has also been included in this paper.