Determining the potential for reflection of cracks

Title: Determining the potential for reflection of cracks
Author(s): B. Martín-Pérez, El H.H. Mohamed
Paper category : conference
Book title: Fourth International RILEM Conference on Reflective Cracking in Pavements - Research in Practice
Editor(s): A. O. Abd El Halim, D. A. Taylor
and El H. H. Mohamed
Print-ISBN: 2-912143-14-4
e-ISBN: 2351580265
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Publication year: 2000
Pages: 115 - 124
Total Pages: 10
Nb references: 8
Language: English

Abstract: 
Current pavement design and analysis procedures are no successful in evaluating/designing rehabilitation measures such as overlaying cracked asphalt concrete. Rehabilitated roads therefore continue to deteriorate rapidly after overlaying as a result of early reflection of cracks. One of the major deficiencies in today's approach to analysis of pavement structures for rehabilitation purposes is the lack of a realistic representation of in-service conditions such as size, intensity, and pattern of existing cracks. Consideration of in-service conditions is critical for effectively assessing the impact of accumulated damage, which is essential for accurately predicting the performance of a proposed rehabilitation strategy.

This paper introduces a new approach to analysis of pavement structures which is capable of capturing initiation and propagation of cracking in pavement layers. The proposed model is based on a finite element implementation of an evolutionary micro-mechanics damage-based constitutive law for asphalt concrete. The model has capabilities to account for the impact of existing in-service conditions on the response of the pavement structure. Structural analyses conducted to evaluate the impact of overlaying a cracked pavement successfully distinguished between commonly used linear elastic models and the proposed micro-mechanics model. The model's ability to investigate the impact of construction-induced cracks was also tested. The results agreed with field observations suggesting that these cracks expedite crack reflection. The analytical results indicate that the proposed model is a promising tool that can be used to develop effective solutions to the problem of reflective cracking.

Online publication: 2009-12-23
Publication type : full_text
Public price (Euros): 0.00