A NOVEL FINITE ELEMENT BASED TOOL TO IDENTIFY THE CRITICAL PARAMETERS IN PAVEMENT DESIGN

摘要

For many years, mathematical models have been employedrnto simulate pavement response to load, and these models haverndriven pavement design methods. However, based on the naturernof the pavement's constitutive materials and the complexrninteraction between the moving vehicle and the pavement, thisrnformidable problem has been approached with manyrnsimplifying assumptions. Accordingly, these efforts have yetrnto result in a model capable of predicting damage accurately.rnThis paper discusses work which implements a micromechanicsrnbased theory in an explicit finite element program to represent,rnfor the first time, the response of pavement under cyclicrnloading. This micromechanics based approach is able to capturernthe complex nature of the pavement's concrete material whichrnincludes such aspects as heterogeneity and nonlinear stressrnstrain behavior. The Taguchi Method is then employed withrnthis developed program to examine the critical designrnparameters, and the combination of these two methods providesrna novel unified approach to pavement design capable ofrnpredicting pavement response under dynamic loading andrnidentifying the sensitive design parameters.