Analysis and Evaluation of Transverse-Cracked Semi-Rigid Base Asphalt Pavements Using FWD Data

Transverse cracks are the main premature distress of semi-rigid base asphalt pavements in China, which come from semi-rigid base reflective crack or temperature shrinkage. This paper develops a 3-D FEM to analyze dynamic response of the cracked asphalt pavement under FWD loading pulse. The results indicate that different types of transverse cracks affect the structure performance of pavement differently. A new parameter, Pavement Structure Condition Efficiency (PSC), is developed to distinguish the different type to the transverse crack conditions, which can be directly induced by the FWD deflection data. These results will be useful to the rehabilitation of transverse cracked asphalt pavement.