Impact of Road Geometry and Thickness on Pavement Behaviour using PSIPave 3D™

Roads allow for the transportation of people and goods, thus fostering economic growth and acting as an integral piece of infrastructure in any community. The design of the pavement structure and geometry of a road has a contribution to the long-term performance of the road. The primary objective is to distribute the stresses from traffic on the surface to the layers below and ultimately the in-situ subgrade. By properly selecting designs and planning strategies, the deterioration rate can be decreased, saving costs for maintenance and repairs and minimizing disruption to users while providing a better performing asset. Many current pavement design methods use empirical predictions and do not truly account for material behaviour under loads. Conventional pavement design methods such as American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials 93 (AASHTO 93) and Shell Design Charts for Flexible Pavements (Shell) express traffic in the form of equivalent single axle loads which may not accurately reflect the various truck loading configurations to which a pavement is subjected. This research is done in collaboration with PSI Technologies Inc. (PSI) and the City of Hamilton to compare conventional pavement design methods and the effect of road geometry on pavement structure behaviour. PSI has developed a three-dimensional finite element pavement design method, PSIPave 3D™. This method is a mechanistic model that fully describes the pavement structure behaviour considering traffic loading, roadway geometry and material properties. AASHTO 93, Shell, and Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) do not fully consider the impact of road geometry and material behaviour. This project considers a flexible, urban collector road section in Hamilton, ON. Twelve cases of pavement structure reconstruction and roadway geometry have been developed. Using PSIPave 3D™, the designs and performance predictions for each case are discussed in this work.