Semi-rigid asphalt pavement has a wide range of application cases and data bases, and rutting is a typical failure mode of semi-rigid asphalt pavement. The establishment of an accurate rutting depth prediction model is of great significance to pavement design and maintenance. However, due to the lack of perfect theoretical system and systematic research data, the existing rutting prediction model of semi-rigid asphalt pavement is not accurate. In this paper, machine learning and mechanical-empirical model are combined to study the feature selection affecting the rutting evolution and rutting depth model of semi-rigid asphalt pavement. First, the particle swarm optimization random forest model is used to select the important features that affect the evolution of rutting depth. Second, the R-F model based on important features is proposed for the first time, which is compared with modification of rutting model in the Chinese Specifications for Design of Highway Asphalt Pavement (JTG D50-2017) and R-B model based on the improved Burgers model. The results show that the R-F model has more accurate prediction ability and better generalization ability, and it does not need complex data preprocessing and noise reduction. Here, the machine learning method is introduced to analyze the data characteristics, and the R-F rutting depth prediction model framework is innovatively proposed, which greatly improves the applicability and accuracy of the existing model framework.
Keywords: R-F model; feature selection; random forest; rutting depth prediction model; semi-rigid asphalt pavement.