Mechanistic-empirical Design of Perpetual Road Pavement Using Strain-based Design Approach

Abstract

Present paper deals with the development of a Mechanistic-Empirical model of the strain-based design of perpetual road pavement using Odemark's principle. The bituminous pavement which can withstand minimum design traffic of 300 msa has been classified as perpetual pavement in this paper. The pavement has been considered as a three-layered system with a top layer of bituminous mix followed by unbound granular materials which rest on soil subgrade. The constituent bituminous layer thickness in the pavement has been determined by limiting the radial tensile strain at the bottom of the bituminous layer against fatigue and the vertical compressive strain at the top of the subgrade against rutting. The allowable strain against rutting and fatigue has been used in the present analysis from mechanistic-empirical correlations recommended in IRC:37-2018. The pavement section has been transformed into a homogeneous system by Odemark's method for application of Boussinesq's theory. To validate the thickness of the perpetual pavement, the strain at different layer interfaces in the pavement was compared using IITPAVE software, which shows the pavement section using present method is safe against rutting but marginally fails under fatigue. Moreover, conventional pavement thickness obtained using IRC:37-2018 were compared with the present method, which shows reasonably good convergence. It has been found that the bituminous layer thickness in a layered system of pavement seems to be more sensitive to fatigue than rutting. In this backdrop, modified fatigue and rutting strain values have been recommended for the design of perpetual road pavement.