Effects of traffic characteristics on pavement responses at the road intersection

Compared with pavement structures of ordinary road sections, pavement structures in the intersection are exposed to more complex traffic characteristics which may exacerbates pavement distresses such as fatigue-cracking, shoving, shear deformation and rutting. Based on a field survey about traffic characteristics in the intersection conducted in Shanghai China, a three dimensional dynamic finite-element model was developed for evaluating the mechanistic responses in the pavement structures under different traffic characteristics, namely uniform speed, acceleration and deceleration. The results from this study indicated that: (1) traffic characteristics have significant effects on the distributions of the maximum principal strain (MPS) and the maximum shear stress (MSS) at the pavement surface; (2) vehicle acceleration or deceleration substantially impact the MPS and MSS at pavement surface and could increase the magnitude of them by 20 percent to 260 percent; (3) in the vertical direction, with the increase of vehicle deceleration rate, the location of the MPS peak value and the MSS peak value changes from the sub-surface layer to the pavement surface.