01626696

Component

Optimal highway alignment design has been a topic widely investigated for over four decades. However, the design of highways largely remains an interactive, experience-based process. Indeed, existing work on alignment optimization mostly focuses on feasibility study oriented, corridor level designs. This paper proposes a sequential optimization model for designing highway alignments at the preliminary design level. For that purpose, unlike past work, the model takes into account detailed design variables, parameters and constraints. A highway alignment design model, coupled with a metaheuristic search method are exploited and applied for designing a highway alignment to a sample terrain. Results indicate that the optimized alignment yields an over 35% improvement in earthwork costs compared to a base case of a non-optimized counterpart.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFB10 Standing Committee on Geometric Design. Alternate title: Sequential Model for Optimal Design of Highway Alignments.

01618707

17-01343

English

18p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Alignment; Costs; Earthwork; Highway design; Optimization

Design; Geotechnology; Highways

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-01343

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:25AM