Analysis of Mechanical Responses of Asphalt Pavement Interlayers Based on Shear Spring Compliance

Abstract

To research the influence of the contact condition between a semi-rigid base and asphalt surface course on the mechanical responses of the pavement structure and on fatigue life, a typical pavement structure is chosen and a shear spring compliance from the software Bisar 3.0 is used as the evaluation index of the interlayer contact condition to conduct the mechanical response calculation of the pavement structure and to analyze the change law of the stress, strain, and deflection under different contact conditions, and then the fatigue life of the pavement structure is calculated under different contact conditions. The results show that the shear spring compliance can quantitatively characterize by the interlayer contact conditions between the base and surface course. The interlayer conditions have a significant impact on tensile stress and shearing force. When the interlayer contact pattern changes from a continuous state into a sliding state, the growth rate of the tension stress of the bottom of the asphalt layer is 528.25% and growth rate of shear stress is 157.3% while the interlayer conditions have a smaller impact on deflection.