Numerical development and testing of an accurate and efficient layered elastic computer program

ABSTRACT

For many years, layered elastic theory (LET) has been the preferred method for computing the critical stresses and strains that relate to performance indicators using the mechanistic-empirical framework. LET is an important part of pavement design, back-calculation, and aircraft-pavement classification iterative procedures. Consequently, significant research has been directed at increasing the speed, accuracy, and stability of LET codes. This study presents the numerical methods used to optimize the time-consuming procedures in a LE analysis program. Different acceleration techniques are assessed to increase convergence, accuracy, and stability of computed responses near the surface and at large radial offsets, knowledge of the coefficient characteristic functions is used to reduce matrix inversions, and use of loop vectorisation is used to parallelise operations in the program. Testing against well-known LE programs shows that the proposed methodology results in a noticeable increase in computational efficiency while maintaining superior accuracy and numerical stability in its computed responses.

KEYWORDS:

• Layered elastic theory
• pavement response
• integration-summation-extrapolation methods
• parallelisation

Disclosure statement

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