Dynamic Soil Models for Backcalculation of Material Properties from Falling Weight Deflectometer Deflection Data

Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) test is one of the most widely used methods for in-situ nondestructive evaluation of pavement/soil properties and examination of the structural condition of in-service pavements. A dynamic half-space model is employed in the present work for backcalculation of engineering soil properties from the FWD data. The advantages, limitations and the reliability of the backcalculation elastic moduli evaluated from dynamic soil model are discussed in this paper. Selected numerical results are presented to portray the influence of governing parameters, for example, the presence of shallow stiff layer and the mass density of soil material on dynamic backcalculation of the soil elastic modulus. The investigation presented in this study provides a better understanding of dynamic backcalculation processes which is essential for the development of dynamic backcalculation program and its applications.