The generalized evolution of the level of road traffic in number and characteristics, associated with overloads, today leads to an underestimate of the loads due to traffic when designing road structures. Consequently, this under-evaluation of the aggressiveness of traffic is accompanied by early appearances of damage to the roads and at the same time causing enormous budgetary expenditure on maintenance and rehabilitation. The objective of this work is to establish the methods for analyzing loadings due to traffic in two design methods (the French rational method and the Mechanistic-Empirical method) and then to establish a relationship between the “Nombred’ Essieuxéquivalents” (NE) and the number of “Equivalent Single Axle Load” (ESAL). The distribution of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) on different weighing stations in Senegal shows that heavy goods vehicles are generally overloaded with an overload percentage of up to 87%, largely exceeding the tolerance of 20% applied to the Total Authorized Weight. Charge (PTAC) by the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). By plotting the ESAL graphs as a function of NE, we notice that the point clouds are arranged in the same way. An exponential type relationship between NE and ESAL is found with a coefficient of determination (R2) varying between 0.92 to 0.95. The resemblance of the graphs clearly indicates that the effect of the terminal serviceability index (pt) and the Structural Number (SN) on the number of ESALs has almost no influence on the relationships that may exist between ESALs. and not. The choice of the reference axle and the expression of the load equivalence coefficient, however, constitutes one of the important elements in taking traffic into account in the design of pavement.
