Stress response analysis of concrete pavement under tire of heavy vehicle

Abstract

This article illustrates the applicability of the Finite Element Method (FEM) in the analysis of multi-layer concrete pavement systems subjected to tire loading of a heavy vehicle. For the purpose of simplifying the interaction of the interaction system, it is appropriate to divide the system into two separate independent subsystems, the vehicle and the pavement. For this reason, 2-dimensional interaction model of the contact vehicle-obstacle and 3-dimensional FEM model of the concrete pavement were created. A several constitutive material models, such as linear elastic model, are applied in the analysis to describe the behaviour of the pavement structure. The numerical results from the first computational model can be used as the input for the second calculation phase. The concrete pavement represents a standard pavement, which is used for the regular road structures in road engineering. FEM modelling of the pavement can be used for the direct estimation of the pavement response without performing time and cost expensive field experiments. Calculations were performed in software ADINA using FEM method.