A semi-analytical random shakedown solution for pavements with spatial variability

ABSTRACT

The present paper proposes a step-by-step random shakedown solution, by considering uncertainty in soil parameters explicitly, to meet the safety requirements of road pavement systems design rationally. To this aim, theoretical-based random analysis, called Random Analytical Shakedown Analysis, is established and then validated through comparison of the obtained predictions with the known Random Mesh-free Shakedown Analysis results. It has been shown that the developed theoretical model can effectively capture the effects of soil spatial variability on the pavement shakedown behaviour in a shakedown analysis model. The difference between the deterministic shakedown limit loads obtained by the proposed method and the mesh-free model is within 2%, which shows the comparable accuracy of the suggested theoretical model with the mesh-free method which comprises hundreds of variables and constraints in the optimisation problem. Another advantage of the developed theoretical solution is the prevention of non-convergence situations occurrence in the mesh-free shakedown analysis. Accordingly, the introduced scheme can be efficiently used for rapid evaluation of the shakedown capacity of spatially-varying pavements.

KEYWORDS:

• Geologic uncertainty
• pavement
• shakedown
• semi-analytical solution
• probabilistic analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. Critical review by Dr. Piltan Tabatabaie Shourijeh of Shiraz University of Technology is acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).