Effect of Soil Properties on the Rutting Performance of Flexible Pavement: A Numerical Study

Abstract

With the advancement of technology and infrastructure, the length of the road network is extending immensely and the volume of traffic in the roads is also increasing day by day. Due to this increased traffic, the rutting of flexible pavement has become major distress, which is leading to the permanent deformation of the pavement. The present study mainly focuses on the effect of subgrade materials, i.e., the effect of soil properties on the rutting behavior of a three-layered flexible pavement system. The present study also provides a formulation for determining the surface deformations for a single-axle dual-wheel assembly for three-layered flexible pavement using the finite element method. A repeated load is applied on the selected pavement system considering 20,000 load repetitions. A parametric study is then conducted considering the circular tire imprint, where the thickness of subgrade and subgrade modulus is varied. The results mainly include the vertical deformation and the stress/strain developed in different layers of pavement, and a mechanistic framework is developed for analyzing the three-layered pavement systems. From the results, it is observed that the resilient modulus of the subgrade or subgrade modulus has a significant effect on the rutting or deformation of the flexible pavement.KeywordsRuttingSubgrade modulusRepeated loadFlexible pavement