Review and Assessment of Flexible Pavement

Abstract

The failure of flexible pavement is termed in a cumulative number of standard axles required to cause a pavement to rut up to a depth of 20 mm or the number of standard axles required to exceed fatigue cracking beyond 20% of the pavement surface area as per the Indian code of practice. This study illustrates the effectiveness of finite element analysis in considering a practical design approach for achieving the optimum pavement section subjected to loading. From the obtained results, it is noticed that the value of horizontal tensile strain increases at each trial increase in temperature, showing the adverse effect of a rise in temperature on the life of the pavement. When the stiffer binder is used considering the decrement in temperature of the underneath layer, a drastic increase in the value of tensile strain is noticed which is at much higher side than the allowable limits. The observed value indicates that the selected combination will give rise to fatigue cracking. When the increment in temperature is considered then the reduction in the value of tensile strain even up to 35% is noticed. From the analysis, it is concluded that the use of too soft bituminous mix results in lowering the structural ability of the pavement at high temperatures and too hard bituminous mixes would become brittle at low temperatures resulting in cracking under loading.