Impact of truck suspension and road roughness on loads exerted to pavements

Abstract

A software package, called IntPave, an Integrated Pavement Damage Analyzer, was developed at the Center of Transportation Infrastructure Systems at The University of Texas at El Paso with the capacity to calculate the pavement distress for flexible pavements under any type of traffic load, and to make a comparison of the level of distress caused by a standard and a non-standard, assuming statically exerted loading. However, what has been lacking is a tool to measure the dynamic impact on the pavement due to vehicle-road interaction. In this report, the interaction of truck suspension systems with the roughness of the road surface was analyzed to calculate the additional forces to the pavement. The aim of this research was to quantify the impact of truck suspension system and road surface condition on the damage exerted to the road. Based on the suspension system and the road roughness based on the International Roughness Index (IRI), the truck-pavement interaction was modeled to estimate the dynamic load applied to the pavement. These analyses were incorporated in a new module of IntPave to modify the static load amplitudes to dynamic ones.