Finite element analysis of flexible pavement with different subbase materials

Abstract

The effect of quality of subbase material on the life of a flexible pavement is evaluated in this paper. Three types of naturally occurring materials- namely, coarse sand, conventional subbase material (CSM), stone dust; and four types of industrial waste materials - blast furnace slag (BFS), granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS), Linz-Donawitz (LD) slag, and fly ash are used. The finite element analysis of the pavement is carried out by employing multilinear isotropic elasto-plastic hardening model in the ANSYS (software), and the effect of the type of subbase on the life of the pavement is evaluated. It is shown that the life of the pavement is reduced to 60 to 83 percent when industrial waste is used in its subbase layer. The different design options are suggested to compensate this reduction in the life of the pavement.