Comparison between Flexible Pavement Damage Due to Conventional and Wide-Base Tires of Heavy Multiple Axles

Trucks are considered one of the most important means in transporting. Recently, the tire designers introduced new wide-base tires to replace the conventional dual tires system. The objective of this study is to investigate flexible pavement damage due to different heavy multiple axle configurations with wide-base tires. Several axle configurations including single, tandem, tridem and quad with conventional and wide-base tires were considered in this study. Two flexible pavement sections were analyzed, thick and thin pavement sections with thicknesses and material properties representing majority of the pavement cross-sections. To quantify and compare the damage for thick and thin pavement sections due to heavy axle load configurations, the forward analyses were conducted using KENLAYER program to calculate the pavement response. The horizontal tensile strain at the bottom of the hot mix asphalt and the vertical compressive strain on top of the subgrade and at the middle of each pavement layers as well as the six consecutive sub-layers of the subgrade soils were calculated from the structural model. These pavement responses were utilized in the performance models to calculate the two main pavement distress, fatigue cracking and pavement surface rutting. The strain area model for fatigue and VESYS rutting model for rutting were utilized to calculate the pavement damage. The Axle Factors were calculated for each axle configurations to compare the pavement damage due to axles with conventional and wide-base tires. The results indicate that axle loads with wide-base tires impose more fatigue and rutting damage than axles with conventional tires. {[}Hassan Salama, Ahmed Shehata, Mahmoud Solyman and Mohamed El Refaey. Comparison between Flexible Pavement Damage Due to Conventional and Wide-Base Tires of Heavy Multiple Axles. Life Sci J 2012; 9(3): 544550] (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com.76