Coupled Thermo-mechanical Analysis of Concrete Pavements under Heavy Traffic

Abstract

The tensile stresses of concrete pavements corners, edge centers, and surface centers under heavy traffic are analyzed as the pavements already deflected under temperature stresses. First, a transient temperature field of the pavements in summer and winter extreme weather is solved on ABAQUS. Then, the temperature field is imported into the mechanical model for coupled thermo-mechanical analysis, to obtain the temperature stresses and deflection of the pavements. Then, a vehicle load is located at different positions of pavements in different time; the tensile stresses of pavements are analyzed and received the most unfavorable combination of vehicle load and temperature stresses. The concrete pavements with thermal deflection may appear fracture at the corner and the edge center at 14:00PM in summer under once over-axle-load, so the linear combined fatigue failure theory of vehicle load and temperature stresses is not applied to concrete pavement under the over-axle-load.