ACCELERATED PAVEMENT TESTING WITH TXMLS (TEXAS MOBILE LAND SIMULATOR)

This paper documents the test results from full-scale accelerated pavement testing with 640,000 axle load repetitions (320,000 tandem axles) applied to the test pavement. Each tandem axle was set to carry a legal load of 151KN. The bogies were configured to load the pavement under channelized traffic, and thus within a short period of time the pavement yielded more load related distress as compared to real world conditions. The pavement performance data such as rutting and cracking was collected at intervals of 0, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 40,000, 80,000, 160,000, 320,000, and 640,000 axle repetitions. Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) tests were performed at these same data collection intervals to characterize the structural capacity of the pavement system. A Climatronics weather station was on the site to gather environmental data during testing. FWD maximum surface deflection data showed a drastic increase at the same period. Several heavy rain falls had occurred between 80,000 and 160,000 repetitions. There was a significant deterioration in terms of rutting after 160,000 repetitions. FWD tests successfully detected the weak spots before testing. Later, these weak areas were confirmed by the distress observed such as rutting and cracking. The maximum rut depth at the end of 640,000 repetitions was 17.3mm, at the location which had the highest initial FWD deflection. For the covering abstract of the proceedings, see IRRD 490713.