Design of Heavy DutyPavements

Abstract: This research is focused on design of Heavy Duty Pavement which is when a pavement loading exceeds highway levels. The environment where these conditions occur are for example at ports, industrial areas and airport because of the use of heavy vehicles as handling of containers by Straddle Carriers, Front Lift Trucks or Reach Stackers, airplanes and more. The main emphasis here will be on heavy duty pavements for ports. Different design methods are discussed and compared for the pavement design of ports. In this research two different design methods are thoroughly analyzed, the British Ports Associations Heavy Duty Pavements Manual which is a chart based procedure and the HIPAVE program which is an Australian Heavy Duty Pavement Design Guide. Both those methods are widely used around the world. Furthermore, an analysis is performed to research the plastic properties of the pavement. In most design methods, the material properties of the granular materials are assumed as elastic when they are not, they are elasto-plastic. A Finite Element Analysis is performed to determine if this assumption has significant effect on the design of pavements by comparing models of a design pavement section with elastic granular materials and elasto-plastic granular materials. The main conclusions from the comparison study of different pavement design methods are when using the HIPAVE program the total thickness of the design pavement section is smaller than using the British Ports Manual. Smaller thickness result in less materials needed for and therefor lower cost for the pavement section. Regarding the plasticity analysis, it is concluded that the assumption to model the behavior of unbound granular materials as elastic in pavement design is correct. The Finite Element Analysis determined that plasticity does have effect on the behavior of the materials with respect to elastic behavior, but there is not a considerable difference in pavement displacement between the two analysis.