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Determination of bituminous overlay thickness of flexible pavement by

mechanistic-empirical approach based on concentration factor
Sujata Purakayastha*, Partha Pratim Biswas, Manoj Kumar Sahis
Department of Construction Engineering, Jadavpur University, BlockLB, Plot8 SectorIII, Kolkata 700098, India

Received 1 July 2019; received in revised form 29 December 2019; accepted 3 January 2020

Abstract

In this paper, attempts are made to formulate a methodology for determination of bituminous overlay thickness of flexible pavement by
mechanistic- empirical approach based on concentration factor. The term concentration factor in this paper has been defined as a factor, which is used for
determination of vertical stress by Boussinesq’s theory in a two layered system. An analytical approach for determination of concentration factor has been
presented in this paper for different modular ratio defined as the ratio of elastic modulus of top and bottom layer in a two layered system. The elastic
modulus of in-service pavement has been obtained by back-calculation from rebound surface deflection which has been used for determination of
modular ratio. In this paper, the vertical interface stress and corresponding deflection in a two layered system has been determined for an estimated
modular ratio with required overlay thickness of specified resilient modulus so that the interface deflection becomes equal to the allowable deflection for
design axle load repetitions as recommended by Asphalt Institute. In this backdrop, required thickness of bituminous overlay has been obtained by
solving the proposed equation using back-calculation technique by Odemark’s method. Comparative analysis of the results obtained from the present
study with the findings of the Indian Road Congress (IRC) shows reasonable convergence in different load ranges.

Keywords: Odemark; Modular ratio; Concentration factor; Deflection; Overlay; Flexible pavement

1. Introduction pavement. The higher value of rebound deflection indicates the

Flexible road pavement can be characterized as a layered
system of elastic materials, the stiffness of which reduces from
top to bottom. Stress, strain and deflection in such system have
been considered as design parameter to explain the failure of the
multilayered system. The most important aspect of pavement
maintenance is condition monitoring of existing road pavement at
suitable interval to assess the structural adequacy of the
pavement. The performance of the pavement is largely dependent
on the structural adequacy and therefore, the need of
characterization of pavement strength becomes the most
important issue for maintenance of flexible road pavements.
There are many nondestructive and partial destructive test
approaches for evaluation of structural strength of in-situ
pavement. Benkelman Beam rebound deflection is considered as
one of those useful techniques for evaluation of structural
strength of flexible road
* Corresponding author
Email addresses: sujatapur@yahoo.co.in (S. Purakayastha);
drppb@jadavpuruniversity.in (P. P. Biswas);
manojsahis@gmail.com (M. K. Sahis).
Peer review under responsibility of Chinese Society of Pavement
Engineering.
poor strength of pavement and vice-versa. Gradual increase of
rebound deflection therefore, reduces the present serviceability
index of the road pavement and gradually leads a stage of
terminal serviceability when the need of placing overlay on the
top of in- situ pavement becomes unavoidable.
2. Literature review
The Asphalt Institute MS-17 [1] suggested a deflection based
overlay design methods based on the measured rebound
deflection from the Benkelman Beam test. The required overlay
thickness is obtained from a graphical representation
corresponding to the projected overlay traffic, critical period
adjustment factor, and temperature adjustment factor. The IRC:
81-1997 [2] used an elastic deflection data from the Benkelman
Beam test for the design of overlay thickness. Pavement
temperature, moisture condition, subgrade soil and other
information are recorded during measurement of existing
pavement deflection for necessary correction in rebound
deflection data. The design overlay thickness in terms of
bituminous macadam (BM) is obtained from thickness design
curves corresponding to the characteristic deflections and
extended overlay traffic. Kinchen and Temple [3] suggested
overlay thickness design based on traffic load accumulations,
deflection reduction properties of the overlays, and

ISSN: 1997-1400 DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s42947-020-0166-1

Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering. Production and hosting by Springer Nature
2 S. Purakayastha et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology xx (2020) xxx-xxx

deflection measurements at failure using Dynaflect device. The or strain below a layer depend on the stiffness of that layer only.
test result shows reasonably compatible with required overlay
If the thickness (h1), Poisson’s ratio (μ) and modulus of a layer
determined from the Louisiana – AASHTO flexible pavement
(E) are changed but the stiffness remains unchanged, the stress,
design guide. Hoffman [4] introduced YONAPAVE, a simple
strain below the layer should also remain unchanged. Using the
method for design of overlay based on measured FWD deflection
formulation of Odemark, the two layered system as shown in Fig.
basin, maximum deflection, and variability of deflections along the
1 may be transformed into a homogeneous system with an elastic
section. Using these data, corrected structural number (SN eff) is
modulus (E2) as shown in Fig. 2, where the equivalent thickness
calculated from the area of deflection basin. Finally, the required
of the transformed section has been expressed by Eq. (3).
overlay thickness is estimated from the difference of structural
Therefore, equivalent thickness of the homogenous layer
number required (SNreq) as per AASHTO guide and SNeff. Horak
[5] investigated various deflection basin parameters for he  f h1 3 E (3)
rehabilitation of pavements based on equivalent layer thickness E2
(ELT). Result shows the concept of ELT correlates well between 1

subgrade vertical strain which is useful for calculation of where, ‘f’ is a correction factor usually ranges between 0.8 - 1.0.
subgrade elastic moduli and development of overlay design
curves. Soos and Toth [6] investigated overlay design for thick 3.2. Deflection based design of overlay
asphalt pavements based on method of equivalent thickness.
Result shows that the proposed method is suitable for the The Asphalt Institute recommended the correlation between the
pavement overlay design. Oregon State Highway Division [7,8] allowable deflection and the equivalent standard axle load
developed an overlay thickness design method based on percent (ESAL) based on mechanistic-empirical approach, which has
reduction of rebound deflection value (from Benkelman Beam been used in the present work as shown in Eq. (4).
Test), equivalent factor, and traffic coefficient, which yields very
close result in
comparison to mechanistic approach. da  k1   ESAL k (4)
2
3. Back-calculation of pavement modulus
where, k1 = 26.322 and k2 = - 0.2438; da = Allowable deflection
Surface deflection on pavement consisting of homogenous (mm).
material can be expressed (Eq. (1)) by the theory of elasticity as, In the present work, the surface deflection on the top of overlay
has been estimated on the basis of interface deflection obtained at
the interface of overlay and in-situ road pavement. It is obvious
 
d  2  1   2 q  a /
(1) that the new layer of overlay will reduce the wheel load stress at
E the interface of overlay and in-situ pavement layer, for its further
where, d = Surface deflection for a circular load with radius (a) dissipation towards subgrade. As the compression of new overlay
carrying a load intensity (q) on a homogeneous layer with an is reasonably lower than that of old in-situ pavement, the
elastic modulus (E) with a Poisson’s ratio (μ). interface deflection can be considered as design criteria for
In the present paper the pavement has been considered as a determination of overlay thickness.
three layered system consisting of top bound granular layer,
followed by unbound granular material layer resting on subgrade
soil. Rebound deflection which is corrected by applying suitable
correction for temperature and subgrade moisture is considered as
an important parameter for evaluation of pavement. Therefore,
the rebound deflection measured on the surface of the pavement
is an indicator of strength of all the constituent layers in the
pavement system. In present paper, the equivalent elastic
modulus of the three layered system of in-situ pavement has been
back-calculated using the Eq. (1), and illustrated in Eq. (2)
assuming the average Poisson’s ratio of the layered system as
0.50.

E2 
1.5  q  a /
(2)
Fig. 1. Typical cross section of a two layered system.
d

Therefore, the overlay with higher modulus (E1) on top of

existing pavement, followed by old in-situ pavement section with
lower elastic modulus (E2) may be considered as a two layered
system and has been shown in Fig. 1. However, for determination
of overlay thickness, the two layered system has been
transformed into a homogeneous system by using Odemark’s
method in order to use the formulations of mechanistic approach.

3.1. Odemark’s method for transformation of layered system

The assumptions made by Odemark [9,10] for transformation

Fig. 2. Transformation of a two layered system into a
of a two layer system to a homogeneous system include that the
homogeneous system by Odemark’s method.
stress
 S. Purakayastha et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology xx (2020) xxx-xxx 3

3.3. Determination of concentration factor using vertical interface 3

Concentration Factor (n)

stress 2.5
2
To find out the interface deflection, the concept of
concentration factor [11] has been used in the present work. It has
1.5
been found that the vertical stress distribution in homogeneous 1
elastic, isotropic medium is independent of the elastic modulus of 0.5
the system. However, in case of layered system, the vertical 0
stress distribution is significantly influenced by the elastic 010 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
modulus of the respective layers. In this backdrop, in a two Modular Ratio (E1/E2)
layered system, the vertical stress at a depth (Z) with a surface
load intensity (q) acting on a flexible circular loaded area with
radius (a) can be expressed by Boussinesq’s theory as given in
Eq. (5).
  Z  
n

Fig. 3. Variation of concentration factor with modular ratio.

 Z  q 1   
 a2  Z 2 
 (5)
 the overlay. In the present case, the equivalent depth of the two
where, the term ‘n’ is defined as concentration factor which
depends on the ratio of top layer (E1) and bottom layer (E2) which
has been termed in this paper as modular ratio.
It has been found that the interface stress in a two layered
system
reduces with the increase in modular ratio. In order to determine
the interface stress in a two layered system, the two layers has
been
transformed into a homogeneous layer by Odemark’s method.
The interface stress has been calculated at an equivalent depth
(he) for different (h1/a) ratio as shown in Fig. 2.
The vertical stress at interface with a surface load intensity (q)
acting on a circular contact area with radius (a) at a depth (he)
may be obtained by Boussinesq’s theory as shown in Eq. (5) in a
homogeneous medium where, the concentration factor may be
considered as 3.0. The vertical stress depends on the tire contact
area and depth of pavement structure [12]. The vertical stress (σz)
thus obtained at point B on such homogeneous medium has been
equated with the stress in a medium with different modular ratio
(E1/E2) in a two layered system to find out the concentration
factor
(n) using Eq. (5).
In the present work, the (h1/a) ratio value between 1.0 and 4.0
has been considered for analytical study. The maximum depth of
the pavement has been considered as three times the radius of
wheel load contact area within which the correlations between
modular ratio and concentration factor is valid.
In this backdrop, correlation between modular ratio and
concentration factor for a (h1/a) ratio of 3.0 has been considered
for data analysis and has been presented in Table 1 and Fig. 3.
The correlation (Eq. (6)) between modular ratio and
concentration factor has been developed from Table 1.
n  3.052(E / E )(0.660)
1 2
Regression Coefficient (r2) = 0.985 (6)
4. Design of overlay by back-calculation
The vertical stress (σz) acting at the interface of overlay and
the in-situ pavement can be determined using appropriate
Table 1
Variation of concentration factor with modular ratio.
Modular ratio (E1/E2) 1 2.5
Concentration factor (n) 3.0 1.667
Modular ratio (E1/E2) 200 300
Concentration factor (n) 0.0923 0.0705
concentration factor for a specific modular ratio and the depth of
layered system with stiffer overlay on the top of in-situ pavement
may be expressed by Eq. (7).
3 𝐸1
(7)
𝑍 = ℎ𝑒 = ℎ1 √
𝐸2
where, h1 is the required overlay thickness corresponding to a
specific modular ratio (E1/E2). It is relevant to mention that the
modulus of in-situ road pavement (E2) may be estimated from the
rebound surface deflection on existing road pavement as
explained in Eq. (2). However, the elastic modulus of overlay
(E1) of bituminous macadam (BM) in this paper has been
considered as 700 MPa at 35°C for overlay carrying axle load
more than 30 million standard axles (msa) and 500 MPa at 35°C
for the overlay carrying axle load less than 30 million standard
axles (msa) following the guideline IRC: 37-2018 [13]. The value
of ‘Z’ thus obtained from Eq. (7) has been used further in this
paper for determination of vertical stress and deflection at the
interface of overlay and old in-situ pavement system.
The variation of vertical stress from a stiffer layer with a higher
elastic modulus (E1) to a softer layer with an elastic modulus of
(E2) in a two layered system has been shown in Fig. 4. It is to be
noted here that the stress dispersion angle (θ) reduces with the
increase in modular ratio in a two layered system and vice-versa.
The increase in dispersed area at layer interface explains the
cause of reduction of vertical stress at a specific depth with
different modular ratio. Therefore, the radius of dispersed area
(as) of stress at the layer interface may be obtained from Eq. (8).
It is evident from Fig. 4 that,
𝜋𝑎2 × 𝑞 = 𝜋𝑎2 × 𝜎
𝑠 𝑧
q
as  a 
Z
(8)
where, ‘q’ is the surface stress intensity acting on a circular plate
of radius (a) on the top stiffer layer. In the present work, the
5 10 25 50 100
1.062 0.6735 0.3676 0.2321 0.1464
400 500
0.0582 0.0501
4 S. Purakayastha et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology xx (2020) xxx-xxx

design based on interface deflection at pavement overlay

interface makes the design more reliable as the allowable
deflection considered in Asphalt Institute method recommends
use of surface deflection as input parameter. Moreover, the
proposed approach may be useful for determination of overlay
thickness with different types of bituminous mix ranging from
bituminous concrete (BC) to dense bituminous macadam (DBM)
made from hot mix asphalt (HMA) to cold mix asphalt (CMA).
Therefore, the findings of the present work would immensely be
helpful for the engineers engaged in repair and rehabilitation of
bituminous road pavement.

Fig. 4. Sectional view of stress dispersion in a two layered

system.

value of surface load intensity (q) has been considered as 0.56

Design Load 5 msa
300

Overlay thickness (mm)

MPa with a contact radius (a) of 150 mm for a wheel load of 40 250
kN.
200
However, the allowable surface deflection on overlay, which in
this case is vertical interface deflection (da) in a two layered system 150
as explained in earlier paragraphs, may be expressed as (Eq. (9)) 100
50 Present Model
1.5 a IRC-81
da  Z s 0
E2 (9)
0.511.522.533.544.55
where, σz = Vertical stress acting at the interface of overlay and Characteristic deflection (mm)
in- situ pavement; E2 = Elastic modulus of in-situ pavement.
Fig. 5. Variation of overlay thickness with characteristic
5. Discussion on test results deflection.

The surface deflection with an assumed overlay thickness (h1)

with required elastic modulus (E1) resting on an in-situ road Design Load 10 msa
pavement can be determined using Eq. (9) which can be equated 300
Overlay thickness (mm)

with the allowable deflection corresponding to a specified 250

standard axle load repetitions as shown in Eq. (4). Therefore the
200
solution of Eq. (9) and Eq. (4) will establish correlation between
required overlay thickness and design axle load repetitions for a 150
measured rebound deflection on an existing bituminous road 100
Present Model
pavement. The correlation thus established has been used to 50
determine the overlay thickness and have been shown in Fig. 5 to IRC-81
0
Fig. 9. Sample calculation for determination of overlay thickness
has been shown in appendix A. 0.511.522.533.544.55
The results obtained from the present mechanistic-empirical Characteristic deflection (mm)
approach have been compared with the recommendation of IRC:
81-1997, the Indian Road Congress guidelines for strengthening Fig. 6. Variation of overlay thickness with characteristic
of bituminous road pavement using Benkelman Beam deflection deflection.
technique. The guideline is based on experimental results
obtained from R-6 project [14] conducted on different national
highways using Benkelman Beam rebound deflection studies in
India. Therefore, to make comparative analysis between the two
Design Load 20 msa
300
Overlay thickness (mm)

approaches, the elastic modulus of overlay, tire pressure and 250

contact radius have been revised in present work in line with the
recommendation of IRC: 81-1997. It is evident from the 200
comparative study, that the requirement of overlay thickness 150
becomes higher for higher rebound deflection. Moreover, to 100 Present Model
withstand higher axle repetitions the requirement of overlay 50
thickness increases for same rebound deflection. It is interesting IRC-81
0
to note that the results obtained in present work largely match in
different ranges of rebound deflection for different axle load 0.511.522.533.544.55
repetitions in spite of variation in certain ranges. The difference Characteristic deflection (mm)
in basic assumption in the present paper, which considers the
interface deflection as design criteria may yield the variation in
overlay thickness with respect to IRC: 81-1997. However, Fig. 7. Variation of overlay thickness with characteristic
overlay deflection.
 S. Purakayastha et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology xx (2020) xxx-xxx 5

Characteristic deflection, dc = 1.5 mm

Design Load 50 msa Wheel load contact pressure, q = 0.56 MPa
300 Wheel load contact radius, a = 150 mm
Overlay thickness (mm)

250 Correction factor, f = 1.0

200 Elastic modulus of lower layer,
150 E2  1.5  q  a / dc = 84 MPa
Present Model
100 Concentration factor, n  3.052(E 1/ E )2(0.660) = 0.9403
IRC-81
50 Equivalent thickness of the homogenous layer,
0 E1
Z  he 3 = 1.812 h1 mm
 f h1
0.511.522.533.544.55 E2
Characteristic deflection (mm) Vertical stress at a depth Z,
0.9403

 
n
     
    
Fig. 8. Variation of overlay thickness with characteristic   1      
1
deflection.  Z  q 1    0.56  1   
   a 2      150 2 

 
   1     1
Z   1.812h  
   1 
Design Load 100 msa 

350
300 
250  
200 Allowable surface deflection on overlay, q  Z
da  1.5 a 
Overlay thickness (mm)

150 Present Model E 2

100 IRC-81 The allowable surface deflection on pavement as per Asphalt
50 Institute method,
0 da  26.322   ESAL 0.2438 = 0.5173 mm
0.511.522.533.544.55
Characteristic deflection (mm)
 0.9403

   
   
1.5150  0.56  0.56  1  1 
   

 150 2
 
  1.812h 1 
 
1.5 a  q     1  

Fig. 9. Variation of overlay thickness with characteristic Elastic modulus for bituminous macadam layer at 35°C, E1 = 500
deflection. MPa

6. Conclusions

The methodology proposed in this paper using the concept of

concentration factor is a useful approach for determination of
overlay thickness on existing pavement. Present analytical
approach may be used for determination of overlay thickness
with different types of bituminous mix ranging from bituminous
concrete (BC) to dense bituminous macadam (DBM) made from
hot mix asphalt (HMA) to cold mix asphalt (CMA). It has been
found that the overlay thickness increases with the increase in
rebound deflection and axle load repetitions. It has also been
observed that the required thickness of overlay is marginally
more for higher axle load repetitions and marginally less for
lower axle load repetitions if compared with the results obtained
from IRC guidelines. Moreover, use of interface deflection on
pavement as allowable deflection makes the design safer and
more reliable against anticipated axle load repetitions.

Appendix A

Sample calculation for determination of overlay thickness in

steps has been illustrated below.
Given data,
Design load = 10 msa
 Z  

E2 84
= 0.5173 mm
Therefore, h1 = 148.89 mm

References

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