ABSTRACT
A finite element modeling of flexible pavements under moving vehicle loading is presented in the framework of the ANSYS computer program. The pavement consists of a top asphalt layer with a linear viscoelastic material behavior and two other layers (base and subgrade) with a linear elastic or Drucker-Prager elastoplastic material behavior. The dynamic response of this pavement to a moving with constant speed distributed load is numerically obtained in the time domain. This response involves the histories of the vertical displacement at the surface, the horizontal strains at the bottom of the asphalt layer and the vertical stress at the top of the subgrade, which are needed for design purposes. It is observed that, in general, the maximum values of the response decrease with increasing values of speed in contrast to the case of all the layers being linear elastic for which the opposite is true. Furthermore, it is observed that the maximum values of the response of the models with the top layer being viscoelastic and the other layers elastic or elastoplastic, remain always higher than the ones corresponding to the model with all layers being elastic.
