Pavement damage model incorporating vehicle dynamics and a 3D pavement surface

This paper proposes a mechanistic-empirical pavement damage model to predict changes in 3D road profiles due to dynamic axle loads. The traffic is represented by a fleet of quarter cars which allows for statistical variability in model parameters such as velocity, suspension stiffness, suspension damping, sprung mass, unsprung mass and tyre stiffness. The fleet model generates statistical distributions of dynamic force at each point which are used to predict pavement damage. As the pavement deteriorates, the distributions of dynamic axle force are changed by the changing road profile. This paper introduces a 3D approach – the transverse position of the wheel is represented by a Laplace probability distribution. This influences the extent to which the force patterns are spatially repeatable. Differences in the range of 10–30% are found between 2D and 3D predictions of pavement life.