Investigation of Tire Contact Stress Distributions on Pavement Response

TLDR

This study documents pavement response parameters from a finite‑layer analytical model under varied loading conditions and provides a database for comparing pavement performance across tire types, pavement thicknesses, and vehicle speeds. The analysis uses a 3‑D moving‑load model with conventional and wide‑base tires, applying both uniform and nonuniform contact stress distributions. Results show that nonuniform tire‑pavement stress distributions produce 6–30 % lower responses than the conventional uniform assumption (except for bottom‑layer tensile strain), confirming that the uniform assumption is conservative for rutting, while vehicle speed consistently affects all response parameters and shear stresses have negligible impact.

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.