Viscoelastic FE Modeling and Verification of a U.S. 30 Perpetual Pavement Test Section

ABSTRACT Traditionally, Hot-Mix-Asphalt (HMA) materials in mechanistic analyses for flexible pavements have been treated as pure elastic solids. The research presented herein consists of developing a three-dimensional linear viscoelastic finite element model to simulate the behavior of a perpetual pavement structure subjected to traffic loading at different temperatures and vehicular speeds. The developed model relatively accurately predicted not only the stress and strain responses but also the deflection response concurrently. The results of this research will encourage the pavement community to use viscoelastic analysis of perpetual pavements in practice, which otherwise are extensively being analyzed with the conventional elastic models.