Title: IMPROVEMENTS TO THE MATERIALS CHARACTERIZATION AND FATIGUE LIFE PREDICTION METHODS OF THE TEXAS RIGID PAVEMENT OVERLAY DESIGN PROCEDURE
Abstract: This report presents certain improvements to the Texas Rigid Pavement Overlay Procedure (RPOD2) with regard to materials characterization and fatigue life predictions. Suggestions are made for characterizing rigid pavement layers from Dynaflect deflections and material tests, and some guidelines for selecting design sections along the length of a road are presented. Finite element analysis is used to quantify the effect of pavement discontinuities on the stresses obtained from layered theory. Further finite element analysis is used in an attempt to relate the critical reflection stresses in an AC overlay to deflection measurements obtained before overlaying. A fatigue equation is derived from AASHO Road Test data on rigid pavements in a mechanistic manner, using few simplifying assumptions. Failure of CRC pavements is defined using condition survey data in terms of a rate of defect (punchout and patch) occurrence, and the predictions of the above fatigue equations are compared to the lives of inservice CRC pavements. The predictions made by RPOD2 of the fatigue lives of asphalt overlaid rigid pavements are compared to existing condition survey data of these pavements, and improvements are suggested. (FHWA)
Publication Year: 1981
Publication Date: 1981-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 13
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