ABAQUS, a general-purpose finite element software package, was used to simulate the pavement response in the Canterbury Accelerated Pavement Testing Indoor Facility (CAPTIF). A three-dimensional non-linear finite element (3D-FEM) model was developed to model the pavement structure. The stress dependency of base course and subgrade was investigated in the laboratory and accounted for in the numerical simulation. The plasticity of the pavement materials was considered by using the Drucker-Prager constitutive model in the finite element simulation. The measured strains, interface stresses and deflections were measured in the instrumented test track. In addition, two multilayer elastic models were used for the purpose of comparison with the finite element simulation and the actual measurements. The results of this study showed that for the unbound base layer, the calculated strains from the two elastic models were in reasonable agreement with the measured values in the instrumented test track, while the 3D-FEM model tended to overestimate the strains at the bottom of the base layer. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E208431.
Samenvatting