Wave propagation approach for dynamic responses of transversely isotropic viscoelastic pavement under impact load

Abstract

Recently studies reveal that the viscoelasticity of the asphalt layer, the transverse isotropy of each structure layer and the foundation condition of the pavement structure are important factors when analysing the data from falling weight deflectors. However, these factors have not been considered in present analytical solutions simultaneously. To fill this gap, the wave propagation approach was extended to establish a new analytical solution. It was shown that the wave propagation approach could eliminate the positive exponential functions in matrix and only matrix with four elements was adopted in calculation, which contributed to an immense improvement in computational stability and efficiency. A subroutine for transversely isotropic viscoelastic material in finite element software ABAQUS was developed to verify the accuracy of the proposed analytical solution. Several numerical examples were also presented to discuss the influences of the aforementioned factors on the dynamic responses of asphalt pavements.