Prediction of Temperature Distribution for Previous Cement Concrete Pavement with Asphalt Overlay

Abstract

In this study, the temperature distribution of a pavement was predicted by developing an analytic algorithm. The Laplace and inverse Laplace transform techniques and Gaussian quadratic formula were applied to a pavement system of an asphalt overlay placed over an existing concrete pavement. The temperature distribution of the previous cement concrete pavement with an asphalt overlay can be estimated with the proposed analytical method regardless of the depth and time. To conduct the method, the layer thicknesses, material thermal properties and climatic factors (including air temperature, wind velocity and solar radiation) were firstly input. Then, a discrete least-squares approximation of the interpolatory trigonometric polynomials was used to fit some specific measured climatic factors considered in the surface boundary condition, i.e., the measured solar radiation intensity and air temperature. The pavement surface convection coefficient can be approximately calculated by the wind speed. The temperature solutions are validated with the measured pavement temperature data of two different periods of a whole year (summer and winter). The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of the developed analytical approach to predict the temperature distribution of the existing cement concrete pavement with an asphalt overlay in different weather conditions with acceptable accuracy.