ABSTRACT

MOJARRAD, HAMED. Three Dimensional Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Airport

Pavements. (Under the direction of Dr. A. A. Tayebali, and Dr. M. S. Rahman.)

The mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement design requires evaluation of pavement

responses, i.e., stress, strain, and deformation of pavements. In case of airport pavements,

where high aircraft loads with complex tire assemblies are applied to the pavement, the

model used to calculate the pavement responses should be developed with additional

considerations. In this study, the effects of parameters such as the stress dependency of the

aggregate base course (ABC) layer, tire imprint, landing gear configuration, and shear

stresses due to tire loading are considered to evaluate the pavement response that governs the

pavement design.

In this study the stress dependency of the aggregate base course (ABC) layer which is

believed to be the principal structural component of the flexible pavement is modeled using

user material subroutines (UMAT) in ABAQUS FEM software where the resilient modulus

is assumed to be a function of bulk stress. The resilient modulus is calculated at any load

increment for all integration points based on the calculated strains at the beginning of each

load increment and will be used to calculate the stresses. In order to have the stress

dependent material parameters for the ABC layer, Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) is used

and effect of different parameters such as grain size distribution and stress state on the

resilient behavior of the ABC layer materials is studied.

The DEM simulations performed in this study conclude that coarser materials tend to have

higher resilient modulus values, and the resilient modulus of granular materials increases

with increase in bulk stress. The DEM simulation results were calibrated using laboratory test

results reported for similar material in previous studies.

The pavement response calculated from the 3D FEM models were used to estimate the

maximum allowable number of load repetitions for a given pavement section that was

compared with the maximum allowable number of load repetitions calculated using the FAA

flexible airport pavement design procedure. The stress dependency of the ABC layer was

found to influence the maximum allowable number of load repetitions.

For the design of airport pavements, literature review suggests the use of elliptical tire

imprint instead of circular tire imprint for design. In this study, it was observed that using

elliptical tire imprint will result in lower allowable number of load repetitions for fatigue

cracking (Nf) which turned out to be more significant in case of full depth asphalt pavement

section where the fatigue cracking was the critical pavement distress controlling the total

allowable number of load repetitions.

Aircrafts will apply significant shear loads on airport pavements. In this study, lower

allowable number of load repetitions was observed for the pavement in presence of shear

loads. Although the mentioned observation was captured more clearly for circular tire

imprint, but in case of full depth asphalt pavement section, presence of shear loads impacted

the pavement response for both circular and elliptical tire imprints.
 Three Dimensional Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis
of Airport Pavements

by
Hamed Mojarrad

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of

North Carolina State University
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Civil Engineering

Raleigh, North Carolina

2011

APPROVED BY:

_______________________________ ______________________________
A. A. Tayebali M. S. Rahman
(Chair of Advisory Committee) (Co-chair of Advisory Committee)

_______________________________ ______________________________
T. Hassan N. P. Khosla