A probabilistic assessment of surface deterioration across diverse driving conditions: a study of dual tyre-pavement contact incorporating uncertainties from wheel lateral wander

This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of pavement surface damage over repeated loading cycles, incorporating realistic tyre-pavement interaction and the stochastic nature of load location within a numerical framework. Contact stresses at the tyre-pavement interface are computed using a semi-analytical code (SAM), which considers the actual geometry of a dual tyre set and pavement properties. Both the pavement and tyre models are constructed as multilayered linear-elastic half-spaces. Top-down cracking initiation is treated as a tensile-induced mechanism within a continuum damage approach. The study investigates four vehicle operating conditions: pure rolling, acceleration, braking, and cornering. The effect of lateral wandering is incorporated through a Monte Carlo Markov chain technique, assuming that the deviation of the centre of the dual tyres follows a truncated normal distribution. Given that the value of standard deviation is not the same for every road type, several values of this parameter are analysed in this paper. Numerical simulations reveal critical conditions arising from cornering and channelised traffic. When these conditions intervene simultaneously, the surface course can only endure 6% of the expected number of axle loads on a straight road section. This paper also highlights that the probable location of macro-cracks under channelised traffic may depend on the distribution of the tensile strain field, which relies upon the shape of tyres and loading configurations. As the lateral spread of traffic loads increases, the standard deviation of lateral wandering emerges as the dominant factor in forecasting both the magnitude of surface damage and the extent of the damaged zone.