Dynamic loading effects on pavement performance : the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD divine test at Canterbury Accelerated Pavement Testing Indoor Facility CAPTIF.

A test has been undertaken at the Canterbury Accelerated Pavement Testing Indoor Facility (CAPTIF) to investigate the influence of vehicle dynamics on pavement performance. This test was part of an internationally funded research program coordinated through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) known as DIVINE (Dynamic Interaction between Vehicle and INfrastructure Experiment). For this test, the two loading vehicles were fitted with different suspensions and ran in offset wheelpaths. The two suspension types were a multi-leaf steel spring and an airspring suspension with viscous damping. The pavement and vehicles were extensively instrumented and monitored. Each vehicle applied a static load of 49 kN and drove on single wide-base tyres. 1.7 million loading cycles were applied to the flexible pavement, which consisted of 88 mm of asphaltic concrete (maximum particle size of 16 mm) and 200 mm of well-graded crushed aggregate (maximum particle size of 20 mm) over a silty clay subgrade (with a CBR of 12 percent). The results show how the pavement condition changed with increased numbers of applied loads and the extent to which dynamic loading affected the pavement performance. (A)