FLEXIPAVE: A PROGRAM FOR THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF FLEXIBLE AND RECYCLED PAVEMENTS

FlexiPave is a user-friendly Windows-based program developed in Visual Basic 5.0, which generates and analyses a three dimensional finite element mesh representing a flexible or recycled road pavement structure. Input to FlexiPave is very simple. The user is invited to enter the number of layers of the pavement structure and the thickness and material properties of each layer. The user has also the option of changing default parameters that control the mesh size and wheel loading. These default values are set in line with the design recommendations of AUSTROADS. After checking the design parameters, FlexiPave generates the necessary finite element mesh, solves the finite element problem and produces the displacements, strains and stresses at the user-specified critical points. It is evident that using FlexiPave encourages the user to use an advanced analysis technique, such as the finite element method very easily by limiting the number of design input parameters. Moreover. it offers the user the flexibility of changing any of the default options, thus tailoring the finite element model to the needs of the user very easily. This simplifies the analysis of pavement structures, thus allowing the user to explore several design options and to choose the most appropriate or the optimum one for the given structural factors and in view of material availability. In addition to its own solver, FlexiPave offers the user the ability of using STRAND6 and MSC/NASTRAN as the finite element solver by generating input files for these programs. FlexiPave can also read output files produced by STRAND6 and MSC/NASTRAN after analysing the finite element models. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see IRRD 895316.