Effects of FWD Deflection Time History Parameters on Dynamic Backcalculation
Publication: Airfield and Highway Pavements 2023
ABSTRACT
The falling weight deflectometer (FWD) is the most common nondestructive testing device used to evaluate the structural capacity of highway and airport pavements. While FWD testing is simple and prevalent, the accurate backcalculation of pavement layer properties has been challenging. The use of static modeling for backcalculation has significant limitations, especially for rigid or thick and stiff flexible structures that are common for airport pavements. Research suggests dynamic backcalculation offers significant advantages over static backcalculation by modeling the inertial effects, the viscoelastic behavior of the asphalt concrete layer, and the damping behavior of the subgrade layer. The FWD deflection time histories contain a wealth of information that are unique to each pavement structure. The static backcalculation methods make use of the FWD peak deflections, whereas the traditional dynamic backcalculation methods use the peak deflections and the time delay between the peak deflections and the peak load. In this paper, the authors explore different parameters from the FWD time histories for use in dynamic backcalculation through a parametric study. The dynamic backcalculation is then performed using the recommended parameters for a flexible pavement structure built at the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) National Airport Pavement Testing Facility (NAPTF) at Atlantic City International Airport, New Jersey.
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Published In
Airfield and Highway Pavements 2023
Pages: 340 - 352
History
Published online: Jun 13, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Air transportation
- Airport and airfield pavements
- Airports and airfields
- Asphalt pavements
- Computing in civil engineering
- Continuum mechanics
- Displacement (mechanics)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering mechanics
- Gravels
- History
- History and Heritage
- Infrastructure
- Mathematics
- Parameters (statistics)
- Pavement condition
- Pavement deflection
- Pavements
- Practice and Profession
- Solid mechanics
- Statistics
- Structural behavior
- Structural deflection
- Structural engineering
- Structural mechanics
- Transportation engineering
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