Stresses of Existing Pavement Induced by Widened Embankment over Soft Soils

Abstract

Widening of existing highway embankments can improve their capacities and ease the high traffic pressures, but it may cause a series of engineering problems including longitudinal pavement cracks, drop off or even local or global instability of embankments especially those on soft soils. How to prevent severe cracks occurring on pavement induced by widening of the existing embankments has been a great concern of geotechnical engineers. A numerical analysis by using a commercial FEM program was conducted to investigate the influence of the thickness of foundation soils on the development of transverse stress in the pavement of the existing and widened embankments. The effect of widening time on the stress was also discussed. The results indicate that compressive stress will be caused in the existing pavement prior to the widening, while considerately lager tensile stress will be induced in the existing pavement after widening. In the view of reducing pavement tensile stress, a most suitable time to begin widening was proposed for engineering practice.