Paper ICMPA160 8th International Conference on Managing Pavement Assets STUDY ON RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ROAD PROFILE AND STRUCTURAL DAMAGE OF THE PAVEMENT

Pavement is a structure that is directly exposed to very severe external actions such as traffic load, natural environmental impact, etc. Pavement failure begins to progress soon after being opened to traffic. A bad pavement surface degrades the running performance of motor vehicles. In turn, the vehicles vibrate in a vertical direction causing from further damage to the pavement surface. In this study, we noted that the dynamic load on the pavement by the running motion of vehicles varies with their vertical vibration, which is ascribable to the surface profile. So it is considered possible to predict the pavement life taking into account actual traffic conditions which could eventually measure the dynamic load. The focus of the study are as follows: (1) a method of estimating dynamic load from the vibration acceleration measured on the unsprung mass of the vehicle was suggested as a simplified way for measuring the dynamic load the vehicle applies to the pavement surface and (2) the impacts given to the dynamic load by two factors, surface profile and running speed, which are assumed to affect dynamic load, were determined by theoretical calculation The simplified method for measuring the dynamic load the vehicle applies to the pavement surface has been made known and the fact that the damage given to the pavement varies with the surface profile and running speed has been theoretically verified. This paper reports on these results of this verification