Thermal stress of asphalt pavement based on dynamic characteristics of asphalt mixtures

This paper presents a rational analytical approach for estimation of thermal stress in asphalt pavements by taking dynamic mechanical characteristics of asphalt mixture layers into consideration. The analytical solution for thermal stress in single layer was derived by utilizing thermal equations of equilibrium and integral transformation. Then the analytical solution of thermal stress for an asphalt pavement structure was derived by transfer matrix method in multilayer elastic system. Functional relationship between the dynamic modulus of representative asphalt mixture and the temperature that was used for the analytical calculation of thermal stress was obtained based on dynamic modulus testing on asphalt mixtures. The proposed approach has been illustrated through a numerical example. Result shows clear difference of calculating results considering dynamic mechanical characteristics of asphalt mixture layers to those with static parameters.