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

Abstract

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.