The influence of pavement degradation caused by cyclic loading on its failure mechanisms

In this paper, a simple method is proposed to estimate capacity of multilayered road structure including the degradation of the elastic and plastic properties of the constituent materials. In the study boundary value problem modeling interaction of wheels with road surface layer in the frame of large deformation theory for elastic-plastic materials was formulated. Plastic properties of the material were described by the flow rule un-associated with yield condition. The Coulomb-Mohr yield condition was assumed and the potential for plasticity is its smooth approximation. In addition, in constitutive modeling the dependence of the Young’s modulus and cohesion of the material from the number of cycles is taken into account. This paper presents qualitative findings in relation to mechanical behavior of the road structure, i.e., for example, the development of plastic zones with increasing load for un-degraded and degraded materials. In addition, a parametric study of the influence of the degradation ratio of the elasticity and plasticity properties for road structure failure mechanism (limit load value) was made.