Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Improving asphalt mix design by predicting alligator cracking and

longitudinal cracking based on machine learning and dimensionality
reduction techniques
Jian Liu a, Fangyu Liu a, Hongren Gong b, Ebenezer O. Fanijo a, Linbing Wang a, c, *
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
b
Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
c
School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural and Mechanical Engineering, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The asphalt mix design based on traditional laboratory fatigue cracking tests of asphalt mixture is not reasonable
Alligator cracking due to the difficulty of simulating the circumstance where asphalt mixture experiences in the pavement structure
Longitudinal cracking and under realistic climate and traffic conditions. The study aims to mitigate the cracking problems during the
Asphalt mix design
pavement design life, by improving the asphalt mix design process by introducing machine learning (ML)
Machine learning
Dimensionality reduction
models, which are used to predict alligator cracking (AC) and longitudinal cracking (LC), and their criteria
MEPDG (required ranges). The data containing AC and LC were extracted from the NCHRP 1-37A report and the long-
term pavement performance (LTPP) program. A total of 33 input features about climate condition, traffic,
pavement structure, and materials properties of each pavement layer were selected. Support Vector Regression
(SVR), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Kernel ridge regression (KRR), Gradient boosting (GB), Extra-trees, and
eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) were used. Meanwhile, three dimensionality reduction approaches,
including Auto-Encoder (AE), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Recursive feature elimination with
Random Forest, were combined with the six ML algorithms (18 hybrid models produced) in order to decrease the
computation complexity and search for the optimum model. The 24 models (6 basic ML models plus 18 hybrid
models) were trained, and their hyperparameters were tuned using Bayesian optimization. Different evaluation
criteria R2, RMSE, MAE, SMAPE, and SI are calculated to evaluate the performance of these models. The results of
the study showed that except for ANN and SVR, the basic ML models can get better for predicting AC and LC
when they are combined with PCA or AE. Based on the performance indices, the optimum among these devel­
oped models proved to be PCA-ANN for predicting AC (R2 = 0.84) and LC (R2 = 0.83). Compared to other
pavement layers, the asphalt surface course is the highest contributor to AC and LC. The improved mix design
process was implemented to determine the mix proportion for the asphalt surface course of a construction project
and Mix-2 with 5.1 % asphalt content was recommended.

1. Introduction Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG), AC and LC are

Pavement cracking is one of the main distresses of asphalt pavements
and is considered the most critical indicator of asphalt pavement con­
dition. Specifically, alligator cracking (AC) and longitudinal cracking
(LC) are the primary forms of asphalt pavement cracking. In addition,
AC usually initiates at the bottom of the asphalt concrete layer and then
progresses up to the pavement surface. Top-down cracking, which is one
of the main types of LC, appears first at the pavement surface. In the
load-related cracking [1] which results from asphalt concrete fatigue
under repetitive loads and environmental effects [2]. In addition to
traffic and environmental factors, many studies have demonstrated that
properties of asphalt mixture have important effects on pavement
cracking [3,6], such as fatigue life [7] and stiffness [4]. Superior prop­
erties of asphalt mixture are not only affected by the quality of aggre­
gates and binders but also rely on scientific asphalt mix design
approaches. Therefore, a reasonable asphalt mixture design can mitigate

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jian19@vt.edu (J. Liu), lfangyu@vt.edu (F. Liu), hgong@tongji.edu.cn (H. Gong), ebenfanijo@vt.edu (E.O. Fanijo), Linbing.Wang@uga.edu
(L. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2022.129162
Received 3 June 2022; Received in revised form 29 August 2022; Accepted 11 September 2022
Available online 19 September 2022
0950-0618/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Table 1
Summary of studies on asphalt pavement performance prediction based on ML techniques.
Pavement Data size (source) Best model architecture No. of Goodness of fit statistics Studies
performance inputs

Rutting 440 (NCHRP Project 01-37A) Artificial neural networks (ANN) 20 (Coefficient of determination) Gong et al. [25]
(20–200-50–10-1) R2 = 0.87
6946 (LTPP) ANN (29,128,32,8,1) 29 R2 = 0.82 Haddad et al.[26]
5265 (LTPP) ANN (19, 50, 20, 10) 19 R2 = 0.93 Wang et al. [27]
IRI 1781 (LTPP) Gradient boosting 13 R2 = 0.90 Guo et al. [33]
1880 (Korea Highway data) Recurrent neural networks 9 R2 = 0.87 Choi and Do [34]
12,300 (LTPP) Random forest 19 R2 = 0.97 Gong et al.[35]
2439 (LTPP) ANN (5–10–10–10-1) 10 R2 = 0.75 Abdelaziz et al.
[36]
125 (Taiwan Highway data) ANN —— R2 = 0.95 Lin et al. [37]
Fatigue cracking 461,414 (NCHRP Project 01-37A) eXtreme Gradient Boosting 15 R2 = 0.58, 0.78 Gong et al. [30]
67 (LTPP) Random forest-ANN (12,10,4,1) 11 R2 = 0.91 Fathi et al. [28]
509 (NCHRP 01-37A) ANN (14,200,100,20,20,1) 14 R2 = 0.61 Gong et al. [29]
Dynamic module 4650 (Arizona State University Deep residual ANNs 13 R2 = 0.99 Moussa and Owais
(ASU) database) [41]
198 (Georgia HMA mixtures) Gradient boosting 19 R2 = 0.98 Worthey et al. [42]
1152 (Laboratory results) XGBoost 24 R2 = 0.96 Yasir et al. [43]
Cracking, rutting, 404, 460, 443 (LTPP) Random forest 17 —— Gong et al. [44]
IRI

cracking problems and extend pavement life.
Traditional mix design approaches only consider volumetric and
mechanical properties of asphalt mixture, which may not cover
comprehensive characteristics, for example, the fatigue resistance of
asphalt mixture. Therefore, researchers have introduced laboratory tests
(e.g., repeated flexural bending [5]), the corresponding evaluation pa­
rameters (e.g., fatigue life [5]), and the related requirements [6,7]. In
addition, the common approaches to capture the fatigue properties also
include other laboratory tests, such as overlay tester [8] and cantilever
bending tests [9], and fatigue life prediction models, such as exponen­
tial, Weibull [10], and logit models [2]. However, laboratory fatigue
cracking tests are implemented on a specimen with a defined thickness
and under assigned stress or strain, which cannot reflect the real
circumstance where asphalt mixture experiences because of the exis­
tence of various uncertain factors (structural parameters, environment
effects, traffic loading, etc.). Although the Accelerated Loading Facility
(ALF) [11] accelerated loading test with full-scale construction can
closely simulate the real case, the whole process costs much. Fatigue
cracking can be still estimated using fatigue cracking predictive models
with the inputs which contain asphalt concrete materials properties
involved in the mix design process. The relationship between fatigue
cracking and asphalt mix proportion can be captured if the accurate
predictive model can be established. Serious cracking (AC and LC)
means asphalt concrete layers have lost the ability to support repeated
loading. The criteria used to judge whether AC and LC of a pavement are
so severe that the pavement fails can be adopted for controlling the fa­
tigue resistance ability of asphalt mixture during asphalt mix design
phase. In this study, the inputs for AC and LC predictive models involve
asphalt concrete characteristics of different pavement layer, but only the
mix design process for the asphalt surface course of new flexible pave­
ments was analyzed.
At present, there already have been many studies focusing on
developing models to predict the cracking of asphalt pavement. One
area is to fit a traditional linear or nonlinear regression predictive model
[12]. Ker et al. [12] established a generalized linear model with the
assumption of Poisson distribution and the inputs of the KESALs,
pavement age, climate variables, and tensile strain under the surface
layer, and the R2 for the model was 0.33 [12]. In the MEPDG, there are
mechanistic-empirical models, called transfer functions, to predict AC
and LC progressions, but the transfer functions need to be calibrated
with nationwide or local data. The global calibrated transfer functions
for predicting AC and LC were verified on 405 and 312 observed data
with R2 of 0.275 and 0.544, respectively [1]. Hall et al. [13], Jadoun and
Kim [14] conducted calibration of MEPDG in Arkansas and North
Carolina and the performances of the AC prediction model are R2 of 0.22
and 0.099, respectively. Local calibration [15] for Arizona shows R2 of
0.226 and − 10.2 for AC and LC prediction, respectively. The predictions
of calibrated transfer functions seem to be biased. In addition to the
deterministic models of regression and calibrated MEPDG models,
another aspect is to use traditional probabilistic theory, such as Markov
process-based transition probability matrices (TPMs) [16], Miner’s law
[17], Bayesian analysis [18], and survival model [19] to predict
cracking progression [20]. Besides, finite element methods also can be
applied to simulate the cracking response of asphalt pavement [21–24],
Ambassa et al. [22] predicted fatigue lives of pavements by establishing
viscoelastic finite element method (FEM) models considering load types,
speed, and asphalt mixture temperature. Kim [24] et al. and Norouzi
et al. [23] combined the Viscoelastic Continuum Damage model and
FEM to simulate fatigue damage areas of asphalt pavement, further
predicting cracking areas. However, complex climate conditions, which
affect fatigue performance significantly, are hard to be simulated by
FEM.
Recently, using machine learning (ML) and deep learning in pre­
dicting asphalt pavement performance, such as rutting [25–27], fatigue
cracking [28–32], and international roughness index (IRI) [33–37], is a
hot topic. Table 1 summarized several past research on asphalt pave­
ment performance prediction using ML techniques. Gong et al. [30]
developed gradient boosted models to predict the AC and LC with the
inputs of climate variables, traffic variables (AADT), pavement thick­
ness, and asphalt mixture properties. However, the inputs related to
properties of asphalt mixture are limited and do not cover the adequate
insights of asphalt concrete. Fathi et al. [38] also applied a hybrid ML
model with Random Forest and ANN to predict alligator deterioration
index using the LTPP dataset, and the inputs include deterioration index,
volumetric properties of asphalt mixture, and age. The same work was
also done by Inkoom et al. [39,40]. However, in these studies, the inputs
for alligator cracking models did not simultaneously contain the inte­
grated information including climate, traffic, structures, and materials
of each layer, especially for the variables involved in the mix design
process, and the types of ML models used were limited. Therefore, this
study aims to establish ML models for predicting AC and LC to improve
the asphalt mix design, and the inputs will contain as many variables
involved in the mix design process as possible. In addition, the infor­
mation on each pavement layer will be considered.
1.1. Objective
Properties of asphalt mixture have important effects on pavement

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 1. Typical pavement structure analyzed in this study.

Table 2
Summary statistics of input and output variables of ML models.
Type of variables Variables indicators Min. Max. Avg. SD.

Input —— Age (month) Age 1.0 321.0 127.0 70.87

Climate Mean ESALs (k/year) KESAL 2.9 23.9 14.9 5.62
Average annual freeze index Freeze_index 0.0 1087.8 203.0 279.21
Average monthly temperature difference (℃)/ year Temp_max_diff 10.3 35.2 23.1 4.76
Average annual precipitation (cm) /year Ann_precip 7.6 1708.2 820.3 249.78
Asphalt Surface Course Thickness (inch) Surface_AC_h 0.9 10.1 3.1 2.11
Specific gravity of binder Surface_AC Gb 0.985 1.045 1.023 0.012
Binder penetration at 77 ◦ F (0.1 mm) Surface_AC pen_77 ◦ F 33.0 225.0 87.2 31.65
Percent passing sieve size (%) 19 mm Surface_AC P_19 mm 81.0 100 98.6 3.47
9.5 mm Surface_AC P_9.5 mm 57.0 100.0 83.4 10.79
4.75 mm Surface_AC P_4.75 mm 41.5 80.0 60.1 7.34
0.075 mm Surface_AC P 0.075 mm 0.1 50.0 6.18 4.83
Bulk specific gravity of aggregate Surface_AC Gsb 2.376 2.972 2.606 0.102
Asphalt content (%) Surface_AC Pb 2.5 7.0 5.3 0.73
Bulk specific gravity of asphalt mixture Surface_AC Gmb 1.914 2.583 2.263 0.105
Air void (%) Surface_AC VV 2.4 13.5 6.8 3.20
Asphalt Binder Course Thickness (inch) BC_h 1.4 14.5 5.3 2.65
Percent passing sieve size (%) 19 mm BC P_19 mm 65.0 100.0 87.5 10.72
9.5 mm BC P_9.5 mm 36.0 93.0 66.7 14.3
4.75 mm BC P_4.75 mm 23.0 72.5 49.8 12.05
0.075 mm BC P_0.075 mm 2.0 10.1 5.3 2.25
Binder penetration at 77 ◦ F (0.1 mm) BC pen_77 ◦ F 41.7 132.0 82.1 19.41
Asphalt content (%) BC Pb 3.4 6.3 4.8 0.75
Air void (%) BC VV 4.6 13.5 8.5 2.21
Base layer Asphalt Treated Base Thickness (inch) ATB_h 3.0 12.7 7.8 2.87
Granular Base Thickness (inch) GB_h 2.9 25.8 10.8 5.76
Granular Base Mr (MPa) GB Mr 55.1 267.5 166.9 42.92
Subbase layer Thickness SB_h 3.6 23.5 9.8 5.39
Materials type SB Mater_type —— —— —— ——
Mr (MPa) SB Mr 78.5 192.1 122.8 34.84
Subgrade Materials type SG Mater_type —— —— —— ——
Mr (MPa) SG Mr 34.1 182.2 75.1 21.98
Output —— Alligator cracking (%) AC 0 84.1 7.2 12.56
Longitudinal cracking (ft./mi) LC 13.5 8007 1131 1484.7

cracking, and AC and LC are the main types of cracking. Scientific
asphalt mix design can mitigate the cracking of pavement. The objective
of this study is to improve the asphalt mix design by introducing ML
models to predict AC and LC and their corresponding criteria. The whole
dataset was collected from the report NCHRP 1-37A and the LTPP
dataset. six ML models and 18 hybrid models made by the combination
of ML algorithm with three dimensionality reduction techniques would
be optimized (hyperparameter tunning) and trained with the input
variables relating to climate, traffic, pavement structure, and pavement
materials. The prediction performance of the best model was compared
with that of global calibrated transfer functions. Finally, the mix pro­
portion of the asphalt surface course of a construction project was
determined based on the improved asphalt mix design approach.
2. Data preparation
2.1. Collection of dataset
The MEPDG introduces a state-of-the-practice tool to design and
analyze new and rehabilitated pavement structures. The NCHRP 1-37A
report [45] illustrates the specific guides for the Mechanistic-Empirical
design of new and rehabilitated pavement. In the NCHRP 1-37A report,
the distress transfer functions were calibrated using data from the LTPP
database over representative pavement sections throughout the entire
U.S. The LTPP database records the information on the environment,
traffic, inventory, and materials in more than 2500 sections. To conve­
niently compare the performance of ML models and the calibrated
transfer functions for predicting AC and LC, the data which were used to
train and test the ML models were the data for the calibration of the
design of new flexible pavement. Meanwhile, the observed pavement

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J. Liu et al.
Table 3
The number of samples in each data analysis step.
AC
Original data sample from NCHRP 1-37A 634
Data samples after removing abnormal zero targets 579
Number of training data samples 463
Number of testing data samples 116
Number of data samples for verification of transfer functions 513
distress data of pavement sections from various states are beneficial to
achieving better generalization abilities of ML models. The data for
globally calibrating AC and LC prediction models can be extracted from
Appendix-EE-1 of the NCHRP 1-37A report [45]. Additionally, the
length and the area of each section in the LTPP are 152 m (500 feet) and
557.4 m2 (6,000 ft2), and the units of each observed AC and LC data
were transformed to the percent of lane area and ft./mi, respectively.
Since the factors referring to traffic conditions, climate conditions,
pavement materials properties, and pavement structures are supposed to
considered for ML prediction models, these attributes of each item (row)
were extracted from the LTPP dataset. Additionally, the data for veri­
fying global calibrated distress transfer functions were extracted from
Appendix-II-1 of NCHRP 1-37A.
2.2. Data pre-processing and feature selection
In general, before fed into ML models, the original dataset should be
processed to deal with outliers, missing values, and categorical vari­
ables. Although the original dataset is extracted from the NCHRP 1-37A
report, outliers for AC and LC also exist. The original data were intended
for calibration of the transfer functions, so there should be no inter­
ruption of maintenance or rehabilitation on the corresponding sections.
However, as regards the change of AC or LC over time in one section,
some observed AC or LC in the same section suddenly become zero
although the last observed AC or LC in this section are large enough,
which is unrealistic. Therefore, the items (rows) corresponding to these
observed AC or LC with abnormal zero values were removed directly.
Fig. 1 displays the typical pavement structure of the sections from the
studied dataset. The purpose of this study is to improve asphalt mix
design by predicting AC and LC. More characteristics of surface asphalt
concrete (AC) layers were considered. Additionally, each base or sub­
base layer is supposed to have three attributes: materials type, thickness,
and resilient modulus (Mr). However, the materials of asphalt treated
base (ATB) are all asphalt treated mixture, and the materials of granular
base (GB) layers are all granular types of materials. Besides, all the Mr of
Fig. 2. Scatter plots and histograms of alligator cracking or longitudinal cracking and age for the database.
Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162
ATB layers have little difference. Therefore, the three features (the type
of materials for ATB and GB, the Mr for GB) were deleted. Finally, the 33
LC input parameters were selected and their names are displayed in Table 2.
If an item lacks one layer, zeros were assigned to the attributes of this
532
474 layer. The missing Mr of subgrade and subbase/base layers can be filled
379 with the sections that are the same type of layers and have the same
95 materials. Missing values on material characteristics of the surface
381 asphalt concrete layer and binder course, such as VV and Gmb of asphalt
mixture, were inferred by the same feature from the nearest sections or
calculated by other features. In addition, categorical variables, which
are materials type of subgrade and subbase layers, were encoded with
the Ordinal encode method. This process transforms each feature of
categorical variables into a unique integer number.
Finally, a total of 579 items (rows) from 82 sections for AC were
reserved. As regards the LC, 83 sections with 474 items (rows) were
kept. The summary statistics of these input variables of ML models and
two targets are presented in Table 2. Table 3 shows the number of
samples in each data analysis step.
Fig. 2 shows the AC or LC versus age and their histogram distribu­
tions for the database. As can be seen in Fig. 2, the histograms of AC and
LC suggest that most AC samples are within 0–5 %, and the majority of
LC samples are in the range of 0 to 500 ft./mi. The MEPDG [1] recom­
mends three performance thresholds (Interstate, primary, and other) for
pavement design. The criteria are used to judge [46] whether a pave­
ment fails at the end of the design life in this study. Asphalt pavements
are generally designed for 20 years. The AC criteria [47] for Primary
roads and Interstate roads are 10 % and 20 %, respectively. The longi­
tudinal cracking for both Interstate and Primary roads is 2000 ft./mi
[30]. The dotted lines in Fig. 2 represent these criteria. According to
Fig. 2, all the failure points (sections) of both AC and LC which are above
the criteria before 20 years nearly belong to Primary roads. For the AC
dataset, at least 15.8 % of sections fail in their design service life, and for
the LC dataset, at least 20.4 %. According to the design principle of
MEPDG, these sections’ actual performances fail to satisfy the require­
ment of reliability when the level of the design reliability is 90 %.
3. Methodology
3.1. Machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a subfield of computational intelligence
which concentrates on the use of data and algorithm to teach computers
and make predictions. Machine learning has widely been used in various
fields, such as marketing analytics [48], medical diagnosis [49], self-
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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

driving cars [50], civil engineering [51–54], etc. over the past years. The √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
√∑
ML models for establishing prediction models in this study include √n
√ ( ŷi − yi )2
Support Vector Regression (SVR), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), √
RMSE = i=1 (2)
Kernel ridge regression (KRR), Gradient boosting (GB), Extra-trees, and n
eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost).
Support vector machine (SVM) was first put forth by Vapnik [55]. 1∑ n
MAE = |yi − ŷi | (3)
The SVR incorporates the principle of SVM to achieve the regression n i=1
objective. SVR can fit a continuous-valued function by minimizing the
width of the region in which most training samples lie. Additionally, 100% ∑
n
|yi − ŷi |
SVR allows us to set the tolerance of error (an error margin and tolerance SMAPE = (4)
n i=1 (yi + ŷi )/2
of falling outside the region). In general, to solve the nonlinear prob­
lems, the input features are usually transformed into higher dimensional √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
√∑
√ n [(y − y) − ( ŷ − ̂
features to obtain better fitting results. ANN originates from biological √ i i y ) ]2
√i=1
systems and is used to capture more complex patterns from data. An SI = √
∑ n (5)
√
ANN model generally has three parts: an input layer, hidden layers, and yi 2
an output layer. Specifically, the network of an ANN model consists of
i=1

connections, each connection transfers the output neuron of this layer to

the input neuron of the next layer and is assigned a weight at the same
time. The activation function determines what the output of a node
should be when given inputs. An ANN model is trained by minimizing
the error between actual targets and predicted ones. KRR just combines
the ridge regression (least-squares with l2-norm regularization) and
kernel trick. The form of the KRR is similar to SVR: the model is fitted as
a linear function in the high dimensional space transformed by a kernel
and the low dimensional data. In general, regarding nonlinear problems,
training a KRR model is faster than other ML models.
Ensemble methods are the techniques that create multiple learning
algorithms and then combine them to provide better predictive perfor­
mance. Bagging and boosting are the main classes of ensemble learning
methods. Bagging involves establishing many decision trees on different
samples which are extracted randomly from the same dataset and then
averaging the total predictions. Both Extra-trees and Random Forest
(RF) follow the bagging method but with fewer variables trained for
each tree. On the other hand, the cut points for splitting samples of one
node in the Extra-trees [56] are selected by random instead of optimal
selection for RF. Boosting involves adding basic estimators sequentially
that make up for the prediction error made by prior estimators and
outputting a weights average of the results of all the learners. Both GB
and XGBoost are the typical Boosting methods. A GB model is trained by
optimizing the arbitrary differentiable loss functions. Specifically, each
tree in a GB model is fit by calculating the negative gradient of the given
loss function. Compared to GB, XGBoost adds advanced regularization
(L1 & L2) by adjusting the minimum loss reduction for splitting samples,
which can decrease the possibility of getting overfitting. In general,
XGBoost can achieve higher performance than GB.
These ML models mentioned above have been used to predict
properties of asphalt mixture and asphalt pavement, such as asphalt
content [53], dynamic modulus [57–64], indirect tensile strength
[65–68], rut depth [35,44], and international roughness index (IRI)
[69–71].
Where n is the number of samples in a dataset; yi is a measured target; ŷi
is a predicted target; y is the mean value of all the measured targets in a
dataset; ̂
y is the mean value of all the predicted targets in a dataset. if the
R2 is larger or the RMSE, MAE, MAPE, and SI are smaller, the model
performs well. In this study, the mean MSE is used to evaluate the per­
formance of an ML model with a combination of hyperparameters dur­
ing the Bayesian optimization process. The final test prediction accuracy
of each ML model would be captured by all the aforementioned per­
formance metrics.
3.3. Bayesian optimization
The traditional methods for hyperparameter tunning include grid
search and random search. The grid search algorithm exhaustively trains
a model with each possible combination of hyperparameters of a given
space, which cost much time. In a random search, a model is trained
with the limited number of hyperparameter combinations from the
randomized search on a given distribution of each hyperparameter.
However, random search is appropriate when they are a smaller number
of hyperparameters. Bayesian optimization is a sequential model-based
optimization that obtains information from the previous results to up­
date the optimization function [72].
In Bayesian optimization, a function is evaluated using a surrogate
model (usually a Gaussian process). In a Gaussian process model, the 5-
fold cross-validated (CV) ML performance is regarded as the dependent
variable (function f(x)), and the variable x is a combination of hyper­
parameters. The ML performance functions can be thought to be a
Gaussian process and follow an N-dimensional multivariate normal
distribution.
(6)
′
f (x)∽GP(m(x), k(x, x ))
The mean function m(x) is usually zero. The covariance function
k(x, x ), which determines a covariance matrix, is given by a kernel (k)
′

between the hyperparameters, the Matern kernel was used in this study.
3.2. Evaluation metrics
First, some f(x) points (random generative hyperparameters resulted
in MSE) are sampled, and a gaussian process is fitted based on these
To compare the performance of different predictive models, the
points. Then the prediction model for MSE is established as a function of
metrics to evaluate the performance of prediction models should be
hyperparameters. The next combination of hyperparameters used to
introduced. Five statistical metrics including R2 (coefficient of deter­
establish the model is found based on the acquisition function. The
mination), RMSE (root mean square error), MAE (mean absolute error),
acquisition function is a function that can be evaluated at x and then
SMAPE (symmetric mean absolute percentage), and SI (scatter index)
achieves the balance between exploitation and exploration. The ex­
are defined as follows:
pected improvement, which was used as the acquisition function of the
∑n
(yi − ŷi )2 study, is defined as follows:
R2 = 1 − ∑in 2
(1)
i (yi − y) EI(x)= E[max(0, f (x) − f (x* )] (7)

where f(x* ) is the best model performance (MSE) with a combination of

hyperparameters x which has been achieved so far. The trained Gaussian
process can predict the probability of the model’s performance

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 3. Schematic of autoencoder model used in this study.

Fig. 4. Mean MSE (AE performance) vs the number of iterations during the Bayesian optimization process.

(P(f (x)|x )) when given the input x, and (f(x)|x ) follows a normal dis­ model performance f(x* ). The next hyperparameters xt+1 are the values
tribution. Therefore, the equation to explain the expected improvement which result in the best-expected improvement [73]:
can be rewritten below:
∫∞ xt+1 = argmaxEI(xt+1 ) (10)
xt+1
EI(x) = P(f (x)|x )(f (x) − f (x* ) )df (x)
f (x* ) Re-built the Gaussian process model based on the previous points
∫ ∞
and the new sample and search the next sample again. Repeat the pro­
= *
N(f (x)|μ(x), σ (x) )(f (x) − f (x ) )df (x) (8)
f (x* ) cess until the number of samples meets the set requirement. Finally,
search the history of sampled points to find the point with the highest
where μ(x), σ (x) is the mean and standard deviation of the normal dis­ model performance. In this study, the hyperparameters of ML and
tribution for (f(x)|x ), and they can be evaluated by the Gaussian process. autoencoder models would be tuned using Bayesian optimization.
Eq. (8) can transform into an analytical form through applying tedious
integration by parts [73] as follows:
3.4. Dimensions reduction methods
EI(x) = (μ(x) − f (x* ) )φ(z) + σ(x)ϕ(z) (9)
Dimensionality reduction approaches are to transform features into a
where φ(z) is the cumulative distribution function of the normal dis­ low dimension, and are classified into two types: linear and nonlinear
tribution N(0, 1), ϕ(z) is the probability density function of the normal approaches. Dimensionality reduction methods can not only decrease
distribution N(0, 1), z is the scaled difference between the μ(x) and best the complexity of ML models but also reduce the noise of the data, which
can improve the performance of ML models. However, using fewer

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 5. The cumulative variance of different numbers of principal components.

Fig. 6. The mean MSE of CV results vs the number of iterations (different combinations of hyperparameters) when applying Bayesian optimization on ML models.

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 7. The mean MSE of CV results vs the number of iterations (different combinations of hyperparameters) when applying Bayesian optimization on hybrid models
made by each ML model with AE.

method and a neural network-based model. The autoencoder is to

Table 4 explore the relationship between actual data and the data in the desired
Time taken for hyperparameter tunning of ML models using Bayesian
dimension. The architecture of an autoencoder model consists of three
optimization.
parts: encoder, coder (Bottleneck), and decoder. In this study, a two-
ML Basic ML Combined with Combined with Combined layer autoencoder was used. Fig. 3 shows the architecture of the
models model RFE PCA with AE
autoencoder model used in this study. As can be seen in Fig. 3, the
Time taken for hyperparameter tunning (s) neurons of the Bottleneck layer are the new features after the dimen­
SVR 185.5 164.7 173.53 123.3 sionality of reduction. The loss function for the autoencoder model is to
KRR 55.9 33.0 45.2 46.2 calculate the error between the reconstruction of the inputs and the
ANN 1575.15 422.1 674.3 783.4 actual inputs.
GB 331.0 237.5 301.8 246.5
How does it find the best neurons of the hidden layer and the
Extra- 218 178.1 192.3 195.4
trees bottleneck layer? Autoencoder is one of the ANN models, so the number
XGBoost 252 115.2 117.8 178.2 of neurons in the hidden layer is also a hyperparametes. In this study, the
neurons of the hidden layers, bottleneck layers, and learning rate (LR)
are tuned using Bayesian optimization. The search bounds for the neu­
features means that only the part of the information from the original rons of the two layers and LR are (6, 16), (17, 28), and (10− 6, 10− 1).
dataset will be fed into models, which may reduce the accuracy of Fig. 4 shows the change of mean MSE (CV results) over the number of
models. calls to each autoencoder model of AC and LC during the Bayesian
This study explores the combination of dimensionality reduction optimization process. The optimal combination of hyperparameters
methods and ML models to establish a better prediction model. The happened in the minimum value of mean MSE. As a result, the optimal
name of a hybrid model produced by the combination of ML and networks for the AC and LC dataset are the same: 28 neurons in the
dimensionality reduction methods is abbreviated to (dimensionality hidden layer, and 16 neurons in the bottleneck layer. However, the LR
reduction method)-(ML). for training the AC and the LC datasets are 0.018 and 0.020, respec­
tively. The other hyperparameters were determined based on
3.4.1. Autoencoder experience.
Autoencoder (AE) [74] is a nonlinear dimensionality reduction

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Table 5
The optimal hyperparameters of ML models and hybrid models based on Bayesian optimization.
ML models Name of Hyperparameters Basic ML model Combined with RFE Combined with PCA Combined with AE

Values MSE Values MSE Values MSE Values MSE

SVR C 0.08 33.20 11.92 34.60 1000 27.15 999.9 36.18

Gamma 1.531 3.406 4.508 0.010
Kernel function Poly Poly RBF RBF
Degree 5 5 3 5
KRR Alpha 0.002 28.03 0.117 36.39 0.018 26.75 0.001 27.66
Gamma 1.187 0.866 10.00 10.00
Kernel function RBF Poly RBF RBF
Degree 3 4 5 1
ANN LR 0.0003 31.26 0.001 55.24 0.0118 25.01 0.005 50.88
Batch size 34 16 256 16
Hidden layers 5 3 3 7
Neurons of each hidden layer 512 257 512 512
GB N_estimators 1000 27.46 932 28.22 977 25.55 1000 24.12
Max_depth 39 14 25 41
Min_samples_split 2 2 3 2
Min_samples_leaf 21 19 44 34
Extra-trees N_estimators 1000 27.82 1000 28.65 1000 23.55 682 24.62
Max_depth 8 9 45 32
Min_samples_split 2 2 2 2
Min_samples_leaf 1 1 1 1
XGBoost N_estimators 1000 28.94 538 29.75 1000 25.50 974 23.74
Max_depth 25 15 25 25
Gamma 1.000 0.100 0.100 0.810
Subsample 0.10 0.10 1.00 0.29
Colsample_bytree 0.90 0.90 0.50 0.51
Min_child_weight 5 4 32 5

Table 6
Statistical metrics of ML and hybrid models made by ML models and hybrid models with dimensionality reduction methods on training and testing data samples for AC.
Method Datasets Metrics SVR KRR ANN GB Extra-trees XGBoost

Basic ML model Training R2 0.8709 0.9356 0.9274 0.9857 0.9810 0.9853

Testing R2 0.6478 0.7975 0.7904 0.7465 0.7519 0.7733
MSE 41.97 24.13 24.98 30.21 29.56 29.39
MAE 2.32 1.95 1.78 2.43 2.15 2.35
SMAPE 149.04 142.47 151.17 148.90 144.63 150.67
SI 56.19 % 42.54 % 43.23 % 47.67 % 47.17 % 47.02 %
Combined with RFE Training R2 0.8339 0.8746 0.8243 0.9737 0.9689 0.9809
Testing R2 0.6134 0.7040 0.5266 0.7180 0.7410 0.7519
MSE 46.07 35.27 56.41 28.84 25.85 27.17
MAE 3.09 2.79 3.04 2.35 1.98 2.00
SMAPE 152.05 151.38 153.87 152.11 143.42 142.30
SI 58.87 % 51.43 % 64.56 % 46.58 % 44.08 % 45.21 %
Combined with PCA Training R2 0.9354 0.9558 0.9243 0.9883 0.9994 0.9953
Testing R2 0.7787 0.8344 0.8400 0.7635 0.8210 0.7927
MSE 26.48 19.73 19.06 28.18 21.33 24.70
MAE 2.02 1.80 1.74 2.4091 1.62 2.16
SMAPE 148.01 148.14 148.06 148.93 125.22 143.13
SI 44.63 % 38.52 % 37.69 % 46.04 % 40.04 % 43.11 %
Combined with AE Training R2 0.8683 0.9375 0.7875 0.9927 0.9994 0.9978
Testing R2 0.7105 0.8326 0.6002 0.8214 0.8109 0.7810
MSE 34.49 19.95 47.65 21.27 22.53 26.09
MAE 2.52 1.98 2.77 1.73 1.64 1.92
SMAPE 150.49 148.80 156.55 142.63 48.97 145.93
SI 50.93 % 38.67 % 59.86 % 40.01 % 41.14 % 44.30 %

3.4.2. Principal component analysis (PCA)
PCA uses an orthogonal transformation to linearly transform original
features into a new set of linearly unrelated variables. PCA is to handle
Eigen-decomposition on the covariance matrix of original features. The
eigenvectors of the covariance matrix are Principal Components and
describe the direction of the new feature space. The eigenvalues explain
the variance of the original data along the axes of the new coordination.
Therefore, the new set of variables is linearly unrelated. The explained
variance ratio of a principal component is the variance of the principal
component divided by the total variance. The cumulative explained
variance ratio refers to the sum of explained variance ratios of given
principal components. PCA was implemented on the input features for
predicting AC and LC, respectively. Fig. 5 represents how cumulative
variance changes with the increase in the number of components. Ac­
cording to Fig. 5, the first component can explain the largest variance,
and the last 10 components can only explain a little variance. In this
study, the selected components were supposed to explain at least 95 %
variance of the original dataset. A threshold of 95 % was used to select
the number of suitable PCAs. Fig. 5. shows that the cumulative variances
for the first 15 and 16 components are 0.951 and 0.956. Since the fea­
tures after transformation for autoencoder models are 16, the first 16
PCAs fed into ML models were selected.

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Table 7
Statistical metrics of ML and hybrid models made by ML model with between observed and predicted data for LC.
Method Dataset Metrics SVR KRR ANN GB Extra-trees XGBoost
2
Basic ML model Training R 0.8556 0.9055 0.8791 0.9245 0.9153 0.9873
Testing R2 0.7162 0.7597 0.7334 0.7429 0.7775 0.7637
MSE 507,960 430,095 477,244 460,123 398,323 448,044
MAE 364.57 328.05 330.91 412.70 308.12 359.83
SMAPE 113.27 106.14 106.56 103.87 105.15 112.52
SI 46.92 % 43.18 % 45.47 % 42.90 % 41.54 % 43.94 %
Combined with RFE Training R2 0.8372 0.9124 0.8418 0.9273 0.9643 0.9827
Testing R2 0.6924 0.7200 0.6120 0.7597 0.7737 0.7518
MSE 550,661 501,275 694,510 430,122 387,247 431,815
MAE 337.91 385.00 441.09 380.87 306.43 367.94
SMAPE 115.92 114.34 121.34 123.76 100.21 121.05
SI 48.85 % 46.33 % 54.83 % 43.20 % 40.99 % 43.21 %
Combined with PCA Training R2 0.8383 0.9102 0.9340 0.9951 0.9992 0.9998
Testing R2 0.7778 0.7612 0.8367 0.7503 0.8091 0.7775
MSE 375,815 427,414 292,208 447,023 341,682 398,270
MAE 308.46 331.54 272.50 352.67 269.20 315.37
SMAPE 109.95 107.34 112.85 109.44 102.77 108.52
SI 40.37 % 43.04 % 35.50 % 44.04 % 38.50 % 41.54 %
Combined with AE Training R2 0.8057 0.9633 0.8471 0.9901 0.9999 0.999
Testing R2 0.6773 0.7740 0.6661 0.7653 0.8041 0.7922
MSE 577,661 404,452 597,740 420,192 350,599 371,907
MAE 386.53 286.61 391.39 353.33 263.43 291.56
SMAPE 113.69 108.19 117.62 111.91 94.97 103.96
SI 50.05 % 41.55 % 50.73 % 42.68 % 38.99 % 39.91 %

3.4.3. Recursive feature elimination
RFE achieves reducing the dimension of a dataset by selecting the
features that are more relevant in predicting the target variable. In the
RFE algorithm, all the features of a dataset are fed into an ML model
first, and the importance analysis of each feature is implemented. The
feature that has the least importance on the target variable is deleted.
Next, the remaining features are used to fit the ML model and remove
the poorest feature again. Repeat the process until the number of
eventual remaining features is the number you set. Two parameters
should be determined when implementing RFE: the number of features
to select, and the algorithm used to select the features. In this study,
Random Forest (RF) was adopted to help choose features. Like autoen­
coder and PCA, the number of the select feature was 16. The feature
selection results by the RFE method for the AC and LC dataset are listed
below.
AC dataset: Age, Ann_temp, Temp_max_diff, Ann_precip, KESAL,
Surface_AC_h, Surface_AC pen_77◦ F, Surface_AC P_4.75 mm, Surface_AC
Pb, Surface_AC Gmb, Surface_AC Gsb, Surface_AC VV, SG Mr, SB Mr, GB_h,
and GB Mr.
LC dataset: Age, Freeze_index, Ann_precip, Surface_AC Gb, Surfa­
ce_AC pen_77◦ F, Surface_AC P_9.5 mm, Surface_AC P_4.75 mm, Surfa­
ce_AC P 0.075 mm, Surface_AC Pb, Surface_AC Gmb, Surface_AC Gsb, BC
9.5 mm sieve, BC VV, SG Mr, SB Mr, and GB Mr.
4. Development of Machine learning
Hyperparameters are crucial because they can control the overall
behavior of ML models. More precisely, choosing suitable hyper­
parameters is the part process of training an ML model. Hyperparameter
tunning works by training multiple trials with combinations of hyper­
parameters to determine the optimal ones. In this study, the hyper­
parameters of the ML models were going to be tuned using Bayesian
optimization with the 5-fold CV. Each ML model may contain many
hyperparameters, but only several key hyperparameters of each ML
model were tuned, other hyperparameters were determined according
to experience.
The major hyperparameters for SVR include the regularization
parameter (C), the kernel function, the gamma, and the degree for the
polynomial kernel. C can determine the weight of the overall error re­
sults from samples inside the region. The gamma is the coefficient of
gaussian RBF and polynomial kernels and determines the variance of the
two functions. The degree of polynomial (Poly) kernel affects how
flexible the margins of the region are. The search bounds for C, the
kernel function, the gamma, and the degree are (10− 3, 103), (RBF kernel,
Poly kernel, linear kernel), (10− 3, 101), and (1, 5), respectively. Since
the basic form of a KRR model is identical to an SVR model, the
hyperparameters and their search bounds for a KRR model are the same
as that for an SVR model.
The key hyperparameters for ANN are learning rate, batch size,
number of hidden layers, and neurons. LR is used to describe how
quickly the parameters updates during gradient descent. The number of
hidden layers and neuron determine the complexity of an ANN model.
Batch size means the number of samples fed into an ANN model in one
iteration. To search for these hyperparameters easily, the number of
neurons in each hidden layer is the same. The search bounds for LR,
batch size, and the number of hidden layers and neurons are (10− 6,
10− 1), (16, 256), (1, 7), and (5, 512), respectively.
The basic estimator of Extra-trees and GB is the decision tree. Like
the decision tree, the hyperparameters, including maximum depth
(max_depth), minimum data point needed to split at nodes (min_sam­
ples_split), and the minimum number of samples required at a leaf
(Min_samples_leaf), are also critical for GB and Extra-trees. Additionally,
the number of trees (n_estimators) has a direct impact on the prediction
result. The search bounds of max_depth, n_estimators, min_samples_s­
plit, and min_samples_leaf are (1, 50), (1, 1000), (2, 100), and (1, 100),
respectively. As for XGboost, besides max_depth and n_estimators,
Gamma which is like a regularization parameter, subsample which de­
termines how many samples are taken to build a tree, colsample_bytree
which describes how many features are used to create each tree, and
min_child_weight means the minimum weight required to create a new
node were also tuned. Their search bounds are (0.1, 1), (0.1, 1), (0.5,
0.9), and (5, 300).
The hyperparameters of 6 ML models and 18 hybrid models made by
the combination of each ML model with each dimensionality reduction
method were tuned for the AC dataset and the LC dataset. The Bayesian
optimization was implemented for all the ML models with 50 iterations.

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 8. Scatter diagrams of the predicted values by ML models and their corresponding hybrid models vs the observed values of AC.

The convergence analysis for ML models and hybrid models made by ML
models with AE (AE-ML) during the Bayesian optimization process is
shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. The time taken for hyperparameter tunning of
each ML model is presented in Table 4. The optimal hyperparameters of
ML models and hybrid models are presented in Table 5. As can be seen in
Table 4, the time taken for the hybrid ML models is less than that for
basic ML models, which suggests that dimensionality reduction methods
decrease the complexity of ML models and can help reduce models’
training time. According to Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, no matter which the target
is, the training results of CV for ML models and AE-ML models tend to be
stable after 40 iterations. SVR and ANN have the higher mean MSE than
other ML models for both AC and LC datasets. When combined with AE,

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 9. Scatter diagrams of the predicted values by ML models and their corresponding hybrid models vs the observed values of LC.

SVR and ANN also have the higher mean MSE than others.
5. Results and discussions
5.1. Performance comparison of models
The train and test results (prediction performance) of ML and hybrid
models for the AC and LC dataset are shown in Table 6 and Table 7.
Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 present the distribution of the predicted values by basic
models and their corresponding hybrid models vs. the observed values of
AC and LC. According to Table 6 and Table 7, no matter which the target
is, R2 in the training dataset for these models is obviously larger than the
test results, which suggests that the majority of models are overfitting,
for example, the training R2 is close to 1, but test R2 is less than 0.8 for

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J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 10. The predicted values by the MEPDG transfer functions vs the observed values of AC and LC.

Fig. 11. Comparison of performance of the MEPDG transfer functions and PCA-ANN for AC and LC.

XGBoost based models. The main reason for getting overfitting is that (
C3
)
compared to the number of features, the number of the train data sample LCTop = 10.56 (12)
1 + eC1 − C2 Log(DI)
is limited. The performance of basic ML models is greater than hybrid
models of ML and RFE for the AC and LC dataset, which implies that the where ACBottom is the area of alligator cracking (% lane area); LCTop is
combination of the RFE method decreases the prediction accuracy, and the length of longitudinal cracks (ft/mi); DI is cumulative damage index;
one possible reason is that the RFE method discards significant parts of
C*1 = − C*2 ; C*2 = − 2.40874 − 39.748(1 + HHMA )− 2.856 ; HHMA is the total
original features. As can be seen in Fig. 8, Fig. 9, Table 6, and Table 7,
HMA thickness (inch); C1,2,3 are the transfer function regression coef­
except for ANN and SVR, the basic ML models can get better for pre­
ficients:C1 = 7.00, C2 = 3.5, C3 = 1.00. DI and HHMA and can be
dicting AC and LC when they are combined with PCA or AE. However, as
extracted from Appendix-II [45].
for ANN-based models, the test R2 of PCA-ANN is higher than that of
The inputs for Eq. (11) and Eq. (12) are aligned with the measured
basic ANN, but the R2 of AE-ANN is smaller than that of basic ANN.
AC and LC from Table 3. Fig. 10 presents the predicted values by the
Among all the models, PCA-ANN and AE-ANN have the largest (0.8400)
transfer functions and their corresponding measured values of AC and
and smallest (0.6002) R2 for prediction AC, respectively. As for pre­
LC. As shown in Fig. 10, the AC transfer function overestimates the AC
dicting LC, PCA-ANN and RFE-ANN have the lowest (272.50) and
when the measured AC are close to 0, but the LC transfer function
highest (441.09) MAE, respectively. Based on the analysis above, PCA-
underestimated the LC when the majority of samples are along the x-
ANN presents the best performance in predicting AC and LC.
axis. The possible reason for underestimation of LC is that MEPDG as­
sumes LC results from top-down cracking, but are actually caused by
5.2. Comparison of MEPDG transfer functions and ML models many reasons, for example, poor joint construction. Fig. 11 shows the
performance comparison of PCA-ANN and the transfer functions on the
To compare the performance of ML models and the calibrated pre­ common part of test samples. In Fig. 11, the PCA-ANN performs rela­
diction functions of MEPDG for AC and LC, the AC and LC were pre­ tively better than MEPDG prediction models for both AC and LC.
dicted based on the transfer functions below [1]:
( )
1 6000 5.3. Features importance analysis: The SHAP values
ACBottom = * +(Log(DI*100))C*
(11)
60 1 + e 1
C 2
The analysis of the SHAP values is a promising method to evaluate

13
J. Liu et al.
Fig. 12. Feature importance analysis based on SHAP values on the XGBoost model with the original features.
the influence of each factor on a model [75] (XGBoost with the original
features in this study). The SHAP value is computed by taking the
average marginal contribution of a feature. the SHAP values break down
a prediction into a baseline value and SHAP values of features, so the
model prediction output f(x) for each sample can be also reproduced as
the sum of SHAP values and the baseline constant values as follows:
f (x) = baselinevalue + sum(SHAPvaluse) (13)
Where baselinevalue is the mean of all the prediction outputs for
regression models. Every feature of each sample has its corresponding
SHAP value. sum(SHAPvaluse) is the sum of the SHAP value of each
feature. According to Eq. (13), a feature with a positive SHAP value
means that this feature of a sample contributes to the increase of the
output, and a negative SHAP value means that the feature leads to a
contrary effect on the output. For the whole train dataset, the distribu­
tion of the SHAP value of all the samples on all the features is displayed
in Fig. 12. If one point of a feature is red, it means the feature value in
this sample is high. Points in blue represent lower values. A red point
(high feature value) with positive SHAP values means that the feature in
high value can make the output increase. The importance of a feature is
proportional to the absolute mean SHAP value of the feature in all the
samples. In Fig. 12, one feature ranking at the top of the listed feature
means the absolute mean SHAP value of this feature is high. No matter
which target is predicted, the top four most important factors are Age,
Surface_AC_Gmb, Ann_precip, and Surface_AC P_4.75 mm. On the other
hand, compared to the other variables of subgrade/subbase/base layers,
GB Mr is found to contribute to the targets most for AC and LC datasets.
To identify the importance of each group of variables (age, traffic,
climate, type of pavement layers) on the targets, the average of absolute
mean SHAP values of features from a group was used to capture the
importance of that group. The average of absolute mean SHAP values for
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Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162
each group of variables is presented in Fig. 13. Fig. 13 shows that
compared to other pavement layers, surface asphalt concrete (AC) layer
is more considerable for evaluation of AC and LC. Subbase/base is in the
middle rank for AC prediction, but it drops to the last rank for LC pre­
diction, it suggests that the cause of AC is more attributed to Subbbase/
base, while Subbase/base is less influential on the cause of LC.
6. Improvement of asphalt mix design and case study
To control cracking problems during the design life period for new
asphalt pavements, the best LC and AC predictions models (PCA-ANN)
were added to the asphalt mix design process. The AC and LC criteria of
the MEPDG were adopted to be the AC and LC requirements during the
mix design process. The procedure of the improved asphalt mix design is
presented in Fig. 14.
First of all, the initial parameters of pavement, such as design life,
climate, and properties of pavement except for the surface AC layer,
should be determined. Next, asphalt binders and aggregates are selected
following the requirements of the Superpave. Subsequently, prepare
three trial aggregate blends at the same initial Pb and estimate the
volumetric properties at 4 % VV by calculating the measured volumetric
properties of these trial blends. The proper gradation is then selected by
checking the AC and LC at the end of pavement life predicted by ML
models and estimated volumetric properties (Voids in the mineral
aggregate (VMA), (Voids Filled with Asphalt) VFA, and Dust to binder
ratio (D.P.)). The actual optimal Pb and the corresponding volumetric
properties of the selected gradation are determined through establishing
relationships between different Pb and volumetric properties of labora­
tory samples in this gradation. Lastly, whether the AC and LC by the ML
models and volumetric properties of the final mixture can satisfy the
Superpave specification and AC and LC criteria are verified. The blend
gradations should be adjusted until all the properties of the
J. Liu et al.
Fig. 13. Feature importance analysis of each group of features on the XGBoost model.
corresponding mixture follow the requirements above.
The mixture of the asphalt surface course for a construction project
would be determined based on the improved mix design method. The
construction pavement is a section of a primary highway. The estimated
18K-lb. ESAL rate in the study lane is 166,000 ESAL/yr, and the design
period is 20 years. Except for the asphalt surface layer, other pavement
layers and their materials’ properties had been determined. The pave­
ment is composed of a poorly fine-grained soils subgrade, a 203 mm (8-
inch) lime treated subbase, an 89 mm (3.5-inch) asphalt treated base, a
76 mm (2.9-inch) asphalt binder course, and a 64 mm (2.5-inch) of
asphalt surface course. The same asphalt binder was used for all the
asphalt concrete layers. According to Fig. 2, the AC and LC requirements
for a primary highway are 20 % lane area and 2000 (ft/mi), respectively.
The specific information on climate, estimated traffic, pavement struc­
ture, and pavement materials are displayed in Table 8.
There were three gradations shown in Table 9 after the initial se­
lection. Three trial blends samples were first compacted with the same
initial Pb, and then volumetric properties (Pb, VMA, VFA, and D. P.) of
each mixture at 4 % VV were estimated based on the measured volu­
metric properties of initial compaction samples. Meanwhile, the AC and
LC of each mixture at 4 % VV at the end of pavement life could be
predicted by the trained PCA-ANN model. The estimated volumetric
properties and the predicted AC and LC of the three blends are presented
in Table 9. As can be seen from Table 9, the predicted AC and LC, VFA,
VMA, and D.P. of all the three mixes can meet the requirements
(AASHTO M323 and MEPDG). However, the mixes whose properties are
very close to the boundary of criteria were going to be excluded. Mix-1
and the Mix-3 were eliminated because the D.P. of Mix-1 is 1.16 (close to
1.2) and the VMA of Mix-3 is 14.0 (equal to 14.0). Therefore, the Mix-2
was selected to obtain the actual optimal Pb by implementing the
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Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162
traditional Superpave laboratory tests. The actual optimal Pb and the
corresponding volumetric properties, which all meet the requirements
and are not quite close to the boundary of criteria, of Mix- 2 are shown in
Table 10. Thus, the Mix-2 with 5.1 % asphalt content was recommended
to be the material of the asphalt surface course of this project.
7. Summary and conclusions
Properties of asphalt mixture have significant influences on pave­
ment cracking, and properties of asphalt mixture are affected by the
asphalt mix design process. To control pavement cracking during the
pavement’s service life, the study improved the asphalt mix design
process by establishing ML models to predict AC and LC and introducing
their criteria. The dataset was collected from the NCHRP 1-37A and the
LTPP. SVR, ANN, KRR, GB, Extra-trees, XGBoost, and their combination
models with AE, PCA, and RFE were optimized, trained, and compared
based on the input variables relating to climate, traffic, pavement
structure, and materials properties of each pavement layer. The per­
formance of the best models was compared to that of global calibrated
functions of predicting AC and LC. Lastly, the best AC and LC prediction
models were applied to design an asphalt mixture of the asphalt surface
course for a pavement project, the following conclusions were drawn:
▪ The results on the selection of the number of reduced features
show that 28 neurons in the hidden layer and 16 neurons in the
bottleneck layer were determined for encoder sections of the
AE models. The First 15 and 16 PCAs can explain close to 95 %
variance of the original dataset.
▪ The Bayesian optimization process for tuning hyperparameters
shows that no matter which the target is, the training results of
J. Liu et al. Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162

Fig. 14. The procedure of the improved asphalt mix design with AC and LC prediction ML models.

Table 8 Table 9
The basic information about climate, traffic, pavement materials, and pavement A summary of three asphalt mixtures determined by the Superpave mix design.
structure except for the surface AC layer for the pavement project. Variables Mix-1 Mix-2 Mix-3 Requirement
Type of variables Variables Values (NMPS (NMPS = (NMPS = (AASHTO M323,
= 9.5 12.5 mm) 12.5 mm) MEPDG)
Design life Age (year) 20 mm)
Traffic Estimated ESALs rate (k/year) 166
Climate Average annual air temperature (℃) 15 Surface AC thickness 2.5
Annual freeze index 40 Penetration at 77 ◦ F 69
Average monthly temperature maximum 22 (0.1 mm)
difference (℃) Gb 1.0197
Average annual precipitation (cm) /year 1144 Percent 19 mm 100 100 99
Subgrade Mr (MPa) 72.6 Passing 9.5 95 84 62
Materials type Fine-grained soils sieve size mm
Subbase Layer Thickness (inch) 8.0 (%) 4.75 65 43 35
Materials type Lime treated soil mm
Mr (MPa) 113.2 0.075 5.8 4.4 4.2
Base Layer Granular Base thickness (inch) —— mm
Granular Base Mr (MPa) —— Gsb 2.624 2.631 2.639
Asphalt Treated base thickness (inch) 3.5 Estimated Gmb@Ndes 2.343 2.365 2.384
Binder course Penetration at 77 ◦ F (0.1 mm) 69 Air void (%) 4 4 4
Percent passing sieve size 19 mm 99 Estimated Optimal Pb 5.31 5.18 4.70
9.5 mm 62 (%)
4.75 mm 35 Estimated VMA (%) 15.4 14.8 14.0 Min./NMPS
0.075 mm 4.2 15.0/9.5 mm
Pb (%) 4.7 14.0/12.5 mm
VV (%) 6.35 Estimated VFA (%) 74.1 72.9 70 65–75
Thickness (inch) 2.9 Estimated Dust to 1.16 0.94 0.98 0.6–1.2
binder ratio (D.P.)
Predicted alligator 6.02 6.09 7.12 Max. 20
CV for all the ML models and all the AE-ML models tend to be cracking (% lane
area)
stable after 40 iterations.
Predicted longitudinal 963.38 1053.41 1116.36 Max. 2000
▪ The performance of basic ML models is greater than hybrid cracking (ft. /mi)
models of RFE-ML for the AC and LC datasets. Except for ANN ⨯ ✓ ⨯
and SVR, the basic ML models can get better for predicting AC
and LC when they are combined with PCA or AE. Compared to

16
J. Liu et al.
Table 10
The real optimal Pb and the corresponding volumetric properties for Mix-3.
Mixtures Actual Opt. Pb Actual Actual VMA
(%) Gmb (%)
Mix-2 5.1 2.356 15.0
Requirements (AASHTO M323, Min. 14
MEPDG)
other models trained in this study, ANN-PCA has the best per­
formance for predicting AC and LC.
▪ Feature importance analysis based on the SHAP values shows
that no matter which target is predicted, the top four most
important factors are Age, Surface_AC_Gmb, Ann_precip, and
Surface_AC P_4.75 mm. Compared to other pavement layers,
Asphalt surface course is more considerable for the evaluation
of AC and LC. The cause of AC is more attributed to Subbbase/
base, but Subbbase/base is less influential on the cause of LC.
▪ With the improved mix design process by introducing AC and
LC prediction models, Mix-2 with 5.1 % asphalt content was
determined for the asphalt surface course of the construction
pavement.
Compared to traditional laboratory tests (e.g., repeated flexural
bending) to evaluate the fatigue life of mixture during asphalt mix
design phase, the method to evaluate the crack resistance (AC and LC) of
asphalt concrete in the circumstance, where the asphalt concrete is
assumed to be paved on actual pavements, with ML models can save
much time and labor. Professional engineers can evaluate the pavement
severe fatigue cracks potential of a designed asphalt mixture in advance
and adjust binder, aggregates, gradation, or asphalt content in time.
However, the proposed method is only applicable to asphalt surface
course of new flexible pavements but does not involve the other asphalt
concrete layers and overlay of old pavement. Sometimes, maintenance
or rehabilitation activities will be implemented to repair cracks before
the end of pavement life, but asphalt mix is selected in the method only
by predicting AC and LC at the end of pavement life. Life cycle perfor­
mance and cost should be considered. The design of asphalt concrete
should not only consider the future cracking progression, but also still
need to consider future possible maintenance or rehabilitation activities.
Besides, the generalization of ML models is limited because the AC and
LC prediction models established by this study only work for the tradi­
tional hot mix asphalt. Therefore, the diversity of the training data will
be enhanced in the future. Specifically, the type of asphalt mixture in the
dataset is supposed to be more varied and include recycled asphalt
concrete, stone matrix asphalt (SMA), open graded friction course
(OGCF), and warm mix asphalt.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Jian Liu: Methodology, Supervision, Data curation, Formal analysis,
Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Fangyu Liu: Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation. Hongren Gong:
Resources, Supervision. Ebenezer O. Fanijo: Investigation. Linbing
Wang: Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Project administra­
tion, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Construction and Building Materials 354 (2022) 129162
Actual Actual D. Predicted alligator cracking (% Predicted longitudinal cracking
VFA P. lane area) (ft. /mi)
(%)
73 0.96 6.13 1075.34
65–75 0.6–1.2 Max. 20 Max. 2000
Data availability
The authors do not have permission to share data.
Acknowledgments
This work is sponsored by a grant from the Center for Integrated
Asset Management for Multimodal Transportation Infrastructure Sys­
tems (CIAMTIS), a US Department of Transportation University Trans­
portation Center, United States under federal grant number
69A3551847103. The authors are grateful for the support.
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