Damage investigation of thin flexible pavements to Longer Heavier Vehicle loading through instrumented road sections and numerical calculations

Longer Heavier Vehicles provide an improvement in energy efficiency and environmental performance compared to traditional Heavy-Duty Vehicles. In Sweden, the maximum permissible vehicle gross weight has been increased from ∼64 to ∼74 tonnes without increasing the axle load limits. The consequence of this is investigated in this study. Response from two instrumented thin flexible pavements subjected to loading from three types of heavy vehicles (∼64, ∼68 and ∼74 tonnes) has been measured and the recordings were compared with numerical calculations based on 2D multilayer elastic calculations. Pavement damage contribution by the three vehicles was thereafter investigated. As long as the number of axles is increased to compensate for the increased vehicle loading and dual wheels are used, ∼74 tonnes vehicle are not more aggressive to the two thin pavement structures compared to the lighter vehicles with fewer axles but higher average axle loads and tyre pressure.