Tire footprint analysis of agricultural vehicles for rural pavements

Abstract

Construction and maintenance of roads in rural communities have significant economic impacts as these routes play a major role in agricultural production worldwide. Even though rural roads experience much less traffic than highways, they are subjected to heavy and unconventional vehicles that are usually ignored in traditional design and rehabilitation of new and existing pavements. This paper presents an analysis of different tire footprints from a set of agricultural vehicles and how to consider these unique loads into pavement design and analysis. Tire footprints were obtained from measurements performed with a Tekscan device with different load levels and then simulated in a thin pavement structure. Tire footprint pressure was determined considering the gross area where the entire footprint region is represented by a single area, and the multi circle approach where each individual footprint is considered as an individual load. Results point out that both methods show similar pavement responses. This is helpful for pavement design and analysisgo considering that most design methods are based on traditional vehicle tire footprint (single load) and as seen in this research, agricultural vehicles present quite unconventional tire footprints.