Investigation of Tire Contact Stress Distributions on Pavement Response

Abstract

This paper documents many important pavement response parameters generated from the finite-layer analytical model, 3D-Moving Load Analysis, under a variety of loading conditions. The loading conditions reported include two types of tires (conventional and wide base) and different contact stress distributions (uniform and nonuniform). The data generated from this study reveal that there is a significant difference between the responses computed with uniform (conventional assumption) and nonuniform contact tire-pavement stress distributions. This difference varies between 6 and 30%, depending on the loading conditions. Except in the case of tensile strain at the bottom of the asphalt concrete layer, the responses computed with the nonuniform stress distribution are lower. This indicates that the use of conventional load distributions is conservative, at least in the case of the estimation of pavement rutting. Vehicle speed showed significant impact on all pavement response parameters, and its influence was consistent with those measured in many field tests. The database of pavement responses presented in the study can be used to compare the performance of pavements under a variety of conditions—for example, thin versus thick pavements, wide-base versus conventional tires, slow versus high speed of the vehicle, and so on. Furthermore, the study reveals that the inclusion of contact shear stresses (longitudinal and transverse) did not significantly influence any of the important pavement response parameters.