With the recent introduction of performance based standards for heavy vehicles, the industry is developing new generation vehicles incorporating higher tyre pressures, higher axle load limits and new axle group configurations such as quad axle groups. There is a need to study the impact of these vehicles on pavement performance now rather than waiting 10-20 years to quantify pavement damage. This paper describes a relative wear assessment method which allows assessment of the relative impact of new proposed heavy vehicles on road pavements compared with existing heavy vehicles. The method includes the following three analyses (i) a 3-dimensional vehicle model to estimate vertical and horizontal forces generated by a vehicle on pavement structure, (ii) a 3-dimensional finite element pavement model to estimate the structural response and performance of a representative pavement under the imposed vehicle loadings, and (iii) a relative wear concept to assess the relative wear of various pavement components based on the outputs from the vehicle model and pavement model. The results of an assessment of the relative impact of new quad axle vehicles on representative thin asphalt surfaced granular pavements compared with existing triaxle vehicles undertaking slow-speed turning movement are also presented in this paper. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E217099.
Samenvatting