Time Domain Backcalculation of Pavement Structure Material Properties Using 3D FEM with Ritz Vectors

Abstract

The three‐dimensional finite element (3D FE) methods have been used increasingly to evaluate the bearing capacity of pavement structures. In this evaluation, layer moduli are backcalculated from measured surface deflections of the pavement structure. However, backcalculation requires repetitive computation to improve the parameter values in an iterative manner, and thus it is time consuming when 3D finite elements are used for the analysis. In this article, an effective method is developed to estimate layer moduli and damping coefficients in the time domain. The pavement is modeled using 3D finite elements. Gauss‐Newton and singular value decomposition methods are employed to backcalculate the unknown parameters. Ritz vectors are used to reduce the size of the matrices required for the analysis. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the Ritz vector method.