Study of Asphalt-Concrete Pavement Fatigue Modeling

Deterioration of asphalt pavements due to fatigue cracking is one of the most common highway pavement failure types. If the fatigue cracks are allowed to develop and grow, the driving comfort and safety, i.e., serviceability of the pavement, decreases. Pavement fatigue behaviour is not a straightforward mechanism and involves many factors and effects, thus computational methods are developed in order to help understand how the pavement works. This paper explores the accuracy and applicability of a less computational resource demanding procedure that uses transient material mechanical behaviour to model the long-term behaviour of a pavement structure. First, the mechanical and fatigue properties of asphalt were determined at the laboratory. Then a four-layer finite-element model was created using Ansys software. Two different models – with and without infinity elements – and two different fatigue simulation procedures – full and simplified – were considered. Material parameters were obtained by the laboratory tests and material properties degraded over time. Cyclic surface loading was applied to simulate the passing of a truck – 6 million fatigue cycles were simulated.