Relating full-scale pavement rutting to laboratory permanent deformation testing

Abstract

The study concerns the full-scale testing of a low-volume road pavement using the heavy vehicle simulator (HVS-Nordic) and the complementary testing of the same materials in the laboratory, especially using a repeated load triaxial test. The objective of the study was to develop an analytical method of calculating the permanent deformations on the basis of the stresses calculated by a finite element program, using input data obtained from laboratory assessments. It was found that the growth of permanent deformation as a function of load repetitions can be estimated using Sweere's Formula, but that an allowance for the stress state needs to be made. This was achieved by allowing a stress dependency in Sweere's parameter b, as a function of the failure ratio q/q _f. It is shown that this can be estimated with a simple linear function according to the HVS and laboratory results. The resilient moduli needed for the finite element calculations were back-calculated from in situ loading tests. Both resilient and permanent deformations proved to be bigger in the HVS tests than those suggested from the laboratory tests.

Keywords:

• Accelerated pavement test
• Low-volume road
• Cyclic triaxial testing
• Permanent deformation
• Rutting

Acknowledgements

The Authors want to thank all financiers of the project. The HVS tests were financed by Finnish Road Administration. The deformation studies were financially supported by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Academy of Finland. The first author also wants to thank the Nottingham Centre of Pavement Engineering for the possibility to work there and Rainer Laaksonen from VTT for the work he has made with the laboratory tests.

Notes

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

A. Dawson

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