Top-down and bottom-up fatigue cracking of bituminous pavements subjected to tangential moving loads

Abstract

A model allowing for the determination of bituminous pavement degradation on traffic circle is presented. The development work has relied on the viscoelastic modeling of bituminous pavements subjected to multiple-axle traffic loads, using the following variables: pavement structure, load speed (or frequency), load configuration, and bituminous materials temperature. The method derived has successfully simulated the phenomenon under investigation. Results obtained indicate that the design concept based on bending fatigue in bituminous layers is not sufficient to realistically predict the degradation of a bituminous pavement structure. The phenomenon of shear at bituminous interface must also be taken into account, as revealed by the simulation results for the degradation of two pavement structures from the French design code [10] (i.e. flexible pavement and thick asphalt pavement). © RILEM 2012.