Finite Element Simulation of Structural Performance on Flexible Pavements with Stabilized Base/Treated Subbase Materials under Accelerated Loading

摘要

Accelerated pavement testing (APT) has been increasingly used by state highway agencies in recent years for evaluating pavement structures and/or materials. However, running an APT experiment is expensive. It requires costly accelerated loading devices and constructing full-scale pavement structures. Since pavement structures can have numerous combinations of pavement layer thicknesses, material types, and mixture designs, it is obviously impractical to test all potential pavement structures under APT. In order to maximize the benefits from an accelerated pavement testing (APT) study and utilize the APT results in the evaluation of other similar pavements with different structural configurations, a computer simulation of APT tests is essential. The objective of the research is to develop a finite element (FE) model(s) to simulate pavement structural performance of stabilized base and treated subbase materials under accelerated loading so that the performance of pavement structures with other stabilized base and subbase materials can be predicted without running APT tests.