Evaluation of Pavement Damage Due to New Tire Designs

Al-Qadi, Imad L.; Wang, Hao

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/13925 Copy

Description

Title

Evaluation of Pavement Damage Due to New Tire Designs

Author(s)

• Al-Qadi, Imad L.
• Wang, Hao

Issue Date

2009-05

Keyword(s)

• wide-base tire
• pavement damage
• pavement response
• tire design

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate pavement damage due to new tire designs using accelerated pavement testing (APT) and finite element (FE) modeling. Three tire configurations were investigated in this study, including the newly developed wide-base tire (455/55R22.5), an older generation of wide-base tire (425/65R22.5), and the conventional dual-tire configuration. Four full-depth flexible pavement sections with three various hot-mix-asphalt (HMA) thicknesses (6, 10 and 16.5 in. [152, 254, and 420 mm]) were exposed to APT. The measured tensile strains at the bottom of the HMA were compared under various tire loading conditions. A three-dimensional (3D) FE model was successfully developed to predict the pavement responses caused by various tire configurations and validated by field measurements. The developed 3D FE model incorporates the measured 3D tire-pavement contact stresses, HMA linear viscoelasticity, continuous moving load, and implicit dynamic analysis. Results of pavement damage analysis indicate that the wide-base 455 tire causes greater fatigue damage and subgrade rutting than the conventional dual-tire assembly does when carrying the same load. However, the relative damage ratios between various configurations at the same load decrease as the pavement thickness increases. On the other hand, the wide-base 455 tire causes less top-down cracking, “near-surface” cracking, and HMA rutting damage than the conventional dual-tire assembly does. Generally, the results show that using a wide-base 455 tire results in the least amount of pavement damage for an interstate road, slightly greater damage for a primary road, and more damage for a local road.

Publisher

Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT)

Series/Report Name or Number

FHWA-ICT-09-048

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/13925

Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

ICT-R59

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