Damage Analysis for Various Pavement Design Variables for Canadian Roads

Funding/Research Supports

FEAS Start-up Funding Program

Project Status

Complete

Project Overview

Fatigue cracking is a major structural failure for asphalt concrete (AC) pavement, that occurs due to repeated loading. Maintaining the structural integrity of the AC pavement has been a challenge for the transportation industry. Application of new generation wide-base tire in heavy truck is becoming more popular day by day. However, the life cycle impacts of wide base tire are not well understood. The new wide base tire is shown to more damaging for the AC pavement while some studies suggested that tensile strain developed by single wide base tire is same as duel tire. The contact area and tire properties are also considered to have influence on primary rutting. An improved method of analysis is required for the assessment of the pavement strains. This research is focused to simulate and understand the loading from wide-base tires under different pavement design conditions of Newfoundland and Labrador. Three-dimensional continuum modeling approach will be employed to study the tire-pavement interaction. The effect of tire geometry specially for contact area and constitutive behavior will be investigated. A parametric study will be conducted to investigate the effect of axle configuration, type, loading, pavement thickness, materials using commercially available Finite Element package ABAQUS. The pavement responses will be captured in terms of stress, strain and total deformation, using non-linear model.