Research on Predicting the Rutting of Asphalt Pavement Based on a Simplified Burgers Creep Model

Abstract

Rutting is one of the most important distresses for asphalt pavement structures especially due to the heavy traffic loadings. In this paper, the solution of Burgers model is employed and simplified, which makes the residual strain only depend on the applied load. Then, the governing equation for dynamic response of pavement was established and a semianalytical solution related to the stress state of asphalt pavement was obtained. Further, an explicit expression was presented and validated to calculate rutting depth of asphalt pavement through incorporating the dynamic stress solution, simplified Burgers model solution, and time hardening model. Compared with the FEM method, the calculation error is less than 5%, which proved the method proposed to be feasible. Compared with the numerical simulation method, every derivation of the rutting formula in this paper has the clear physical meaning and is hence easy to be understood. Besides, the proposed method can save a significant amount of time consumed due to its fast and reliable calculation.