Review of selected fatigue criteria for hydraulic bound layers in road pavements

The paper contains a review of hydraulically bound layers fatigue resistance criteria that are commonly applied in designing the road pavement structures. The effect of the mechanical parameters applied in the respective criteria on the obtained fatigue resistances is analysed with their different nature underscored. Most of the fatigue criteria define the fatigue life through parameters which are related to it only indirectly (such as the tensile strength, the ultimate tensile strain, etc.) instead of using the results of fatigue tests. The results obtained with different criteria are compared and correlated with the results obtained with the methodology used in preparation of “The Catalogue of Typical Flexible and Semi-rigid Pavements”, a Polish pavement design guide published in 2014. It is demonstrated that the differences between predictions generated with the different empirical fatigue models are noticeably greater in the case of lower traffic classes (service levels), converging for higher traffic classes.