Dynamic Pavement-Vehicle Interaction of Rigid Pavement Resting on Two-Parameter Soil Medium

An improved solution algorithm based on Finite Element Method is adopted to analyze rigid pavements under moving vehicular or aircraft loads. Analysis is based on the classical theory of thick plates resting on two-parameter elastic soil medium. The pavement is discretized by four node thick plate elements that account for the transverse shear deformation and bending. The underlying soil medium is modeled by Pasternak shear layer and linear elastic spring and dashpot systems. The dynamic interaction between the moving load and the pavement is considered by modeling the vehicle by spring-dashpot unit. The pavement-vehicle interaction force is modeled with Dirac-delta function. It has been observed that the dynamic interaction between the moving load and the pavement has significant effect on pavement response.