CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

Design Factors
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

1.

Traffic and Loading

Environment
Materials
Failure Criteria
Reliability
Pavement Management Systems (PMS)

Traffic and Loading

Axle loads, load repetitions, tire-contact areas and vehicle speeds

Axle Loads

Single axle with single tires

Single axle with dual tires

Tandem axles with dual tires
Number of Repetitions

Number of repetitions for each axle load (SPECTRA)

Dividing axle loads into groups (PCA)
Equivalent axle (80 KN)
Dividing axle loads into groups (AI& AASHTO)
Dividing axle loads into groups

Contact Area
Axle load/Tire load /Tire pressure/Contact pressure /Contact area
Generally contact pressure is assumed to be equal to tire pressure
Ac=(0.3L)2+(0.4L)(0.6L)=0.5227L2




0.5227

CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

EXAMPLE
Draw the most realistic contact area for an 18-Kip (80 KN) single-axle load with a tire
pressure of 80 psi (552 kPa). What are the other configurations of contact area that have been
used for pavement design?
Solution
The 80-KN single-axle load is applied over 4 tires each having a load of 20 KN.
The contact area of each tire is Ac =4500/80 = 56.25 in2 (3.6X104 mm2)

 . = 10.37 in. (263 mm)
.

Width of tire is 0.6L = 0.6X10.37 =6.22 in. (158 mm).

(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)

Most realistic contact area (rectangle + 2 cemicircles)

Rectangular contact area for use in finite element analysis
Two circles of radius 4.23 in. (107 mm), used by AI
Single circle with contact radius of 5.98 in. (152 mm), FHWA

CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

Vehicle speed
Visco-elastic theory Speed is directly related to the duration of loading
Elastic theory Resilient modulus of paving material is selected for vehicle speed (the greater
the speed is the larger the modulus)

2.

Environment

Temperature
Precipitation
Both affecting the moduli of the various layers
3.

Materials
Material
Properties

Design
Model

Pavement
Responses

Faliure
Criteria

Failure
Probability

General Properties (for both flexible and rigid pavements) :

1. Linear elastic E &
2. Elastic modulus varied with time - Resilient modulus selected with load durations
3. Non-linear elastic constitutive equation should be provided
Flexible pavements:
1. For HMA-creep compliance (1/E) and temperature-time shift factor
2. Fatigue properties of asphalt mix
3. Permanent deformation for each layer
4. Asphalt stiffness
Rigid pavements:
1. Modulus of subgrade reaction
2. Coefficient of thermal expansion
3. Modulus of rupture and fatigue properties
4. Dowel properties (diam. & spacing)

4.

Failure criteria

mechanistic-empirical methods, distress criteria

AASHTO method, PSI

Flexible Pavements:
1. Fatigue cracking2. Rutting3. Thermal cracking-

CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

Rigid Pavements:
1. Fatigue cracking2. Pumping or erosion3. Other criteria-

5.

Reliability

In view of the fact that the predicted distress at the end of a design period varies a great deal,
depending on the variability of predicted traffic and the quality control on materials and
construction, it is more reasonable to use a probabilistic approach based on the reliability
concept . If PSI is used as a failure criterion, the reliability of the design, or the probability
that the PSI is greater than the terminal serviceability index , can be determined by assuming
the PSI at the end of a design period to be a normal distribution with a mean and a standard
deviation . Conversely, given the required reliability and terminal serviceability index, the
acceptable PSI at the end of the design period can be computed.
6.

Pavement Management Systems

Pavement design is a part of the total pavement management process, which includes
planning, design, construction, maintenance, evaluation, and rehabilitation . With the use of a
computer, a pavement management system (PMS) can be developed to assist decision makers
in finding optimum strategies for providing, evaluating, and maintaining pavements in a
serviceable condition over a given period of time. Pavement management can be divided into
two generalized levels: network and project .
1. At the network level, the pavement management system provides information on the
development of an overall program of new construction , maintenance, or
rehabilitation that will optimize the use of available resources .
2. At the project level, consideration is given to alternative design, construction,
maintenance, or rehabilitation activities for a particular project within the overall
program .
Figure 1 .18 is a flowchart for a project-level pavement management system . The traffic and
loading, environment, and materials are the design factors that have just been discussed.
Models of pavement structure may be a mechanistic or an empirical model for flexible or
rigid pavements . Behavior is characterized by stresses, strains, or deformations ; distress is
evaluated by failure criteria ; and performance is based on PSI . For a given reliability, the
life of the pavement before the serviceability index drops below the minimum acceptable
value can be evaluated . Even if the life is less than the design period, say 20 years, the
option is still open, because an overlay at a later date will bring the serviceability index up
and prolong the life of the pavement to more than 20 years. As long as the design meets the
constraints, it will move on to the life-cycle costs block of the process .
Life-cycle costs refer to all costs, including construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation
costs, all benefits, and indirect costs. An economic evaluation will be made on all possible
options and an optimized design at the lowest overall cost will be selected .
After the pavement has been constructed, information on performance, such as distress,
roughness, traffic loading, skid characteristic, and deflection, should be monitored and put
into a data bank. The feedback of these performance data into the PMS information
system is crucial to the development of mechanisticempirical design procedures.
It should be noted that pavement design is a critical part of pavement management.

CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

FIGURE 1.18
Flow diagram of a project-level pavement management system.
Poor design practice will result in higher pavement maintenance and rehabilitation costs
throughout the years and has by far the greatest effect on life-cycle costs .
Recent developments in pavement technology, such as the improvement in laboratory
and field testing equipment and the availability of high-speed microcomputers, have
provided pavement designers with more tools to evaluate the consequences of design
alternatives on life-cycle costs.

CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

7.

HIGHWAY PAVEMENTS, AIRPORT PAVEMENTS, AND RAILROAD

TRACKBED S

The principles used for the design of highway pavements can also be applied to those
of airport pavements and railroad trackbeds, with some modifications.
Highway Versus Airport
Airport pavements are generally thicker than highway pavements and require better
surfacing materials, because the loading and tire pressure of aircraft are much greater
than those of highway vehicles. The effect of loading and tire pressure can be taken
care of automatically in any mechanistic method of design, whether the pavement is
used for a highway or an airport . However, the following differences should be noted
in applying the mechanistic methods :
1. The number of load repetitions on airport pavements is usually smaller that on
highway pavements. On airport pavements, due to the wander of aircraft, several
passages of a set of gears are counted as one repetition, whereas on highway
pavements, the passage of one axle is considered as one repetition . The fact that
highway loadings are not really applied at the same location is considered in the
failure criteria by increasing the allowable number of load repetitions, such as the
incorporation of a shift factor for the fatigue of flexible pavements, and an equivalent
damage ratio for the fatigue of rigid pavements.
2. The design of highway pavements is based on moving loads with the loading duration
as an input for viscoelastic behaviors and the resilient modulus under repeated loads
for elastic behaviors . The design of airport pavements is based on moving loads in
the interior of runways but stationary loads at the end of runways. As a result, thicker
pavements are used at the runway end than in the interior .
3. Although loads are applied near to the edge of highway pavements but far away from
the outside edge of airport pavements, this fact is not considered in the design of
flexible pavements . It is assumed that the edge effect is insignificant if a load is at a
distance of 2 to 3 ft (0 .6 to 0 .9 m) from the edge, so the layered theory can still be
applied . However, this fact should be considered in the design of rigid pavements.
The Portland Cement Association employs edge loading for the design of highway
pavements, but interior loading for the design of airport pavements. The Federal
Aviation Administration considers edge loading, but the edge stress is reduced by
25% to account for load transfer across the joint , so the loading is applied at the
longitudinal joint , not really at the outside pavement edge . Even if the loads can be
applied near the outside edge of airport pavements in certain situations, the number of
load repetitions is small and may be neglected . The above contention is based on the
assumption that the design is based on fatigue and the fact that the stresses at the edge
and the interior are greater than those at the joints . This is not true if the design is
based on the erosion caused by the corner deflection at the joints .
Highway Versus Railroad
Two methods have been used to incorporate HMA in railroad trackbeds, as shown in
Figure 1 .19 .

CE414 Pavement Analysis and Design

1. Overlayment: which is similar to the construction of flexible highway pavements.

The HMA is placed on top of the subgrade or above a layer of base course, and the
ties are placed directly on the asphalt mat.
2. Underlayment: the asphalt mat is placed under the ballast .

FIGURE 1 .1 9
Hot-mix-asphalt railroad trackbeds.
There is a major difference between a highway pavement and a railroad trackbed, namely, the
distribution of wheel loads to the layered system . On highway pavements, wheel loads are
applied over small areas and the magnitude of loads on each area is a constant independent of
the stiffness of the layered system. On railroad trackbeds, wheel loads are distributed through
rails and ties over a large area and the load on the most critical tie under the heaviest wheel
load depends strongly on the stiffness of the layered system . Therefore, the use of thicker
HMA for highway pavements is very effective in reducing both the tensile strain at the
bottom of HMA and the compressive strain on the top of subgrade, but not very effective
for railroad trackbeds. In fact, for an underlayment with a given combined thickness of ballast
and HMA, the tensile strain increases as the HMA thickness increases, which indicates that
the use of ballast is more effective than the use of HMA in reducing tensile strains. That the
replacements of ballast by HMA increases the tensile strain is due to the load concentration,
as indicated by the tremendous increase in the maximum contact pressure between tie and
ballast caused by the stiffer trackbed.
It was also found that overlayment cannot be used for heavy-haul trackbeds, because the
required thickness of asphalt mat is just too excessive, while an underlayment with a thick
layer of ballast and a thin layer of HMA can easily satisfy the design requirements. For the
same reason, the use of full-depth construction, which is popular for highway pavements, is
not recommended for railroad trackbeds. Although the vertical compressive strain on the top
of subgrade has been used most frequently for the design of highway pavements, it was found
that the use of vertical compressive stress is more appropriate for railroad trackbeds.
Portland cement concrete can be used for the construction of slab tracks . The design of slab
tracks is similar to that of rigid highway pavements, except that loads are applied to the rails
connected directly to the concrete slab or through rubber-booted block ties.