Heavy Duty Pavement

Design
Dr Wei Liu
Senior Engineer
Fugro-PMS Ltd, New Zealand
 Presentation Overview
 Introduction
 Pavement Design Method for Heavy
Duty Pavement
 Case Study

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 Introduction
 Pavement is the layered structure on
which vehicles will travel. It's purpose is
two fold, to provide comfortable and
durable surface for the vehicles and to
reduce stresses to the underlying soils.

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 Introduction
 There are two types of
pavement frequently in use
throughout the world :

• Flexible - pavements with

a bitumen bonded surface.

• Rigid - Pavements with a

concrete slab surface which
can be un-reinforced, joint
reinforced or continuously
reinforced.

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 Introduction
 What is Heavy Duty Pavements?
• Pavements subjected to the extremely
heavy wheel loads associated with
freight handling vehicles in industrial
facilities, such as container terminals
and warehouses

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 Introduction
 Common pavement distresses:
• Rutting: a result of heavy, slow moving traffic.
Common in warm areas. Permanent
deformation in the wheel paths .
• Fatigue Cracking: With every passing of a
vehicle, pavement layer bends under loading.
Over time, layer will crack; propagation of
cracks upward eventually reaches the surface.
Fatigue cracking occurs as individual cracks
interconnect.

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 Introdcution
 What is pavement design?
• The goal of pavement design is to
determine the number, material
composition and thickness of the
different layers within a pavement
structure required to accommodate a
given loading regime.

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 Introduction
 Special Issues in heavy duty
pavement design
• Slow moving or static traffic load
• Ultra high load magnitude
• Load Wandering

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Design Principle
 Empirical Vs Mechanistic
 Material Characterization
 Load Characterization
 Pavement Response Model
 Failure Models

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Design Principle
• Minimize critical vertical stress in lower
layers that result in
 Rutting
• Minimize critical tensile stresses in
upper layers that result in
 Fatigue cracking

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Empirical Vs Mechanistic
• Empirical Methods are based on the results of experiments or
experience.
 Advantage: Simpler approach

 Disadvantage: Cannot cope with novel materials or pavement

structures.
It is “like driving a car by only looking in the rear
vision mirror, you could only be sure where you had
been, but not where you were going”
– Geoff Youdale, Chairman, Austroads
Pavement Research Group
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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Empirical Vs Mechanistic
• Mechanistic method applies the physics to determine:
 The reaction of structures to loading.

 Distribution of vehicle loads to the underlying soil layers.

 Need fundamental properties of the materials, pavement

thicknesses, load characteristics.
Traffic Pavement response Incremental fatigue
models (s, e, d) damage models
Climatic
data
Transfer functions
Design &
material
property
parameters Performance prediction
models (rutting, %
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cracks, etc….)
 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Empirical Vs Mechanistic
• Advantages of mechanistic methods:
 Design for new load types (such as super single tires).
 Design with new materials (such as Soilfix stabilized
material).
 Improve reliability of predicting performance.
 Using performance related material properties.
 Use of environmental effects.

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Material Characterization
• Subgrade
 Characterized by strength and/or stiffness

• California Bearing Ratio (CBR)

 Measures shearing resistance

 Units: percent

 Typical values: 0 to 20

• Resilient Modulus (MR)

 Measures stress-strain relationship

 Units: MPa

 Typical values: 30 to 300 MPa

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Material Characterization
• Subgrade
 Effect of Moisture Content
200
180
160
Modulus, MPa

140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
0 5 10 15 20
Moisture Content, %

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Material s DD/2
Characterization Dl
• Subbase and
Roadbase l
 Elastic Modulus E
 Poisson’s Ratio

el = Dl/l E = s/e

et = DD/D m = el/et

Definitions of E and m.
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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Material Characterization
• Surface Layer
 Asphalt Mix
log E  1249937
.  •0.29232
Dynamic
 200  0Modulus E*
.001767(  200 ) 2 (Witczak
 0.002841  4Equation)
 0.058097Va
 Vbeff  3871977
.  0.0021  4  0.003958  38  0.000017(  38 ) 2  0.005470  34
0.802208 
 beff
V  V a  1  e ( 0.6033`3 0.313351 log( f )  0.393532 log( ))

• bitumen viscosity • cum. % retained on 19-mm

sieve
• loading frequency
• cum. % retained on 9.5-mm
• air voids
sieve
• effective bitumen content
• cum. % retained on 4.76-mm
sieve
Presentation to Prologis China • % passing the 0.075-mm sieve
 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Material Characterization
• Surface Layer
 Asphalt Mix

10000
Modulus, MPa

1000

100

10
-20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50
Temperature, C

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Material Characterization
• Surface Layer
 Porland Cement Concrete
• Elastic Modulus
• Flexural strength

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Load Characterization
• Pavement damage
 Miner’s law
• Characterization
 Spectrum
 Expressed as a fraction of a standard load
• Pavement life
 Expression of how much load repetitions can
be endured before unacceptable
serviceability

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Pavement Response Model
• Layered Elastic Analysis
 Each layer is homogenous, isotropic, linearly
elastic (E,m)
 Each layer is weightless
 Infinite in x, y, finite in z direction
 Uniform pressure applied over a circular
area
 Continuity at layer interfaces
• Same: vertical & shear stress
vertical and radial displacement

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 Tire has a total load P, spread over a circular
area with a radius of a, resulting in a contact
pressure of p.

Pavement
Reactions
Deflection (d) Layer 1 No
h1
HMA horizontal
Tensile Strain (et)
E1 boundary,
Layer 2 assume
Granular
h2 Base
layers
E2 extend
infinitely.
Compressive Strain (ev) Layer 3
Subgrade Soil
E3

No bottom boundary, assume soil goes on infinitely.

Layered Elastic Model Representation of a Pavement

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Pavement Response Model
• Critical Pavement Responses and Locations

Location Response
Pavement surface Deflection (vertical)
Bottom of HMA layer(s) Horizontal tensile strain
Top of intermediate layer Vertical compressive
(base or subbase) strain
Top of subgrade Vertical compressive
strain

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Failure Models
• Fatigue Cracking
 allowable number of load repetitions related to tensile
strain at bottom of asphalt layer
 AI & Shell design methods -- allowable load
repetitions related to tensile strain and modulus
Nf = f1(et)-f2(E1)-f3

 Modulus effect is small (f3 is smaller than f2)

 Several models that include only strain : Nf = f1(et)-f2

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Failure Models
• Rutting
 2 procedures to limit rutting
• limit vertical compressive strain on top of subgrade
• limit total accumulated permanent deformation
 AI and Shell design -- allowable number of load
repetitions to limit rutting related to vertical
compressive strain on top of subgrade
 Form (can be used for all materials):
ep = a(e)b(N)1-m

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 Heavy Duty Pavement Design
Method
 Failure Models
• Miner’s Hypothesis
 Provides the ability to sum damage for a
specific distress type
 D =  ni/Ni  1.0
where ni = actual number of repetitions
for load i
Ni = allowable number of repetitions
for load i

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 Case Study
 Design Conditions:
• A concrete pavement for a heavy duty
industrial hardstand with a total
repetition of 182,5000 with a 10 ton
axle load for a period of 5 years.
• Roadbase is the Soilfix Stabilized
Aggregate

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 Case Study
 Design Inputs:

Layer Material Thickness Modulus Poisson’s

(mm) (MPa) Ratio

1 Porland Cement 200 3000 0.15

Concrete

2 Soilfix Stabilized 300 6890 0.2

Aggrage

3 Compact Soil 0.4

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 Case Study
 Pavement Response Calculations
• Critical Stresses in Pavement Structure
Coordinates (mm) Normal Stress (kPa) Shear Stress (kPa)

Loc# Layer X Y Z X Y Z YZ XZ XY

350.1
1 1 0 0 200 -1970.76 -2461.34 9 0 0 0

2 1 171.5 0 200 -2207.53 -2660.59 407 0 0 0

3 3 0 0 500 35.1 35.28 37.04 0 0 0

4 3 171.5 0 500 36.51 36.62 38.49 0 0 0

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 Case Study
 Pavement Response Calculations
• Critical Strains and Displacements in Pavement
Structure
Displacement
Coordinates (mm) Normal MicroStrain (micrometer)
Loc Layer X Y Z X Y Z X Y Z
1 1 0 0 200 -82.7 -110.91 50.75 15.3 0 1067.43
2 1 171.5 0 200 -93.47 -119.53 56.86 0 0 1081.58
3 3 0 0 500 42.68 46.84 89.52 -7.59 0 1059.58
4 3 171.5 0 500 45.1 47.91 93.01 0 0 1072.66

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 Case Study
 Pavement Life Prediction
• Fatigue Cracking Model
s
log N f  17.61  17.61
MR
• Rutting Model
3.87
1 
N r  1016  
ev 

• Results: Fatigue Rutting

Applied Numbers 1825000 1825000

Allowed Numbers 1.54E+07 2.41E+08

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Damage Factor 0.12 0.01
 Thank you!
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