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TirePavement Contact Stress With 3D Finite-


Element Model. Part 2: All-Steel Tire on Heavy
Vehicles

ARTICLE in JOURNAL OF TESTING AND EVALUATION MARCH 2016


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letting you access and read them immediately. Retrieved on: 29 February 2016
Journal of
Testing and Evaluation
Peng Cao,1 Decheng Feng,2 Feng Jin,3 Xiaohu Fan,4 and Changjun Zhou5

DOI: 10.1520/JTE20150235

TirePavement Contact Stress


With 3D Finite-Element Model.
Part 2: All-Steel Tire on Heavy
Vehicles
VOL. 44 NO. 2 / MARCH 2016

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Journal of Testing and Evaluation

doi:10.1520/JTE20150235 Vol. 44 No. 2 / March 0000 / available online at www.astm.org

Peng Cao,1 Decheng Feng,2 Feng Jin,3 Xiaohu Fan,4 and Changjun Zhou5

TirePavement Contact Stress With 3D


Finite-Element Model. Part 2: All-Steel Tire
on Heavy Vehicles

Reference
Cao, Peng, Feng, Decheng, Jin, Feng, Fan, Xiaohu, and Zhou, Changjun, TirePavement Contact Stress
With 3D Finite-Element Model. Part 2: All-Steel Tire on Heavy Vehicles, Journal of Testing and
Evaluation, Vol. 44, No. 2, 2016, pp. 111, doi:10.1520/JTE20150235. ISSN 0090-3973

ABSTRACT
Manuscript received May 31, 2015; Heavy vehicles increase on highways in China year by year. Heavy loads are among the most
accepted for publication August 18,
important factors causing pavement distresses. The distribution of contact stresses between
2015; published online October 26, 2015.
tires and pavement surface greatly inuences the initiation and propagation of pavement
1
Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Associate,
distresses, especially for the top-down cracking. Therefore, to accurately and precisely
Dept. of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua
Univ., Haidian District, Beijing 100084, describe pavement responses, the distribution of contact stresses should be rst
China, e-mail: caopeng518888@126.com investigated thoroughly. This study focuses on simulating the contact stresses between
2
Ph.D., Professor, School of all-steel tires on heavy vehicles and the pavement surface. A 3D nite-element model was
Transportation Science and Engineering, proposed and used to simulate the distribution of contact stresses in different conditions of
Harbin Institute of Technology, 73
Huanghe St., Harbin 150090, China,
tires, including standstill, free rolling, accelerating rolling, and decelerating rolling conditions.
e-mail: fdcgxy@vip.sina.com This model was validated by previous study of the authors. There were three loading levels
3
Ph.D., Professor, Dept. of Hydraulic
used in this study, including 20 kN, 40 kN, and 60 kN. In the standstill condition, the
Engineering, Tsinghua Univ., Haidian maximum pressures on pavement surface were simulated as 1.2 MPa, 1.2 MPa, and 2.4 MPa in
District, Beijing 100084, China,
20 kN, 40 kN, and 60 kN loading levels, respectively, which were much higher than 0.7 MPa,
e-mail: jinfeng@tsinghua.edu.cn
the standard contact pressure in pavement design specication in China. An interesting
4
Ph.D., Weidlinger Associates, Inc., 40
phenomenon was observed that when the load passed a certain value, the width of contact
Wall St., 19th Floor, New York, NY 10005,
United States of America, area kept constant, whereas the length of contact area was prolonged. And the length of the
e-mail: xiaohu.fan@wai.com contact area prolonged linearly with the increase of load. Based on this phenomenon, the
5
Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Hertz contact theory was applied to simplify the traditional 3D nite-element model. In the
Transportation Science and Engineering, simplied model, the complicated 3D all-steel tire was simplied to an equivalent medium.
Harbin Institute of Technology, 73
Huanghe St., Harbin 150090, China
The 3D nite-element model and the simplied model were compared with the analytic
(Corresponding author), method. This indicates that the simplied model can simulate the contact stress of all-steel
e-mail: 4002cj@163.com
tires closely to the analytic results (no more than 10 % difference) and greatly improves the
calculation efciency.

Copyright V 2015 by ASTM International, 100 Barr Harbor Drive, PO Box C700, West Conshohocken, PA 19428-2959.
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2 Journal of Testing and Evaluation

Keywords
asphalt pavement, all-steel tire, contact stress, Hertz contact theory, 3D nite-element model

Introduction contact area created by vehicle loading is oversimplied to cir-


cular, rectangular, or striped shapes, whereas vibration of the
In the 1980s, Fryba [1] systematically addressed for the rst vehicle loading is assumed as a simple harmonic vibration.
time that the dynamic responses of beams, slabs, and solids Therefore, more sophisticated pavement dynamic models were
under moving loads, which built the theoretical foundation for developed later. Cebon [15] and Gillespie et al. [16] studied the
investigating vehiclepavement dynamic interaction using a impact of heavy vehicles on pavement. They simplied heavy
combination of onsite testing, theoretical analysis and numeri- vehicles as a mass-spring-damper system to consider the effect
cal simulation. of the suspension systems of heavy vehicles and developed
The half-innite-space assumption of pavement plays an three-dimensional (3D) vehicle models to investigate the fatigue
important role in obtaining analytic solutions for pavement performance of pavement.
dynamic responses. Siddharthan and colleagues [26] proposed Finite-element models of tires initially were only used in
the continuum-based nite-layer approach, which treats the sub- the tire industry in the 1970s. Tire tread was usually ignored or
grade as layered materials and utilizes the Fourier transform to simplied as grooves. In recent years, pavement distresses, such
solve the dynamic response of pavement under moving loads. This as top-down cracking, were thought to be related to the interac-
approach can deal with complex contact tire stress of moving tion between tires and pavement. The real contact area of a tire
vehicles, such as wide tires and those used on off-road vehicles. loading gained much interest from researchers. Meschke et al.
Hanazato et al. [7] assumed the vehicle load as a moving [17] and Shiraishi et al. [18] rst utilized incompatible tying
linear load and derived the solution of the pavement response method to develop tire models considering tire treads. However,
as an axisymmetric problem. However, the moving linear load the quality of the nite-element model for complex tire treads
assumption is not appropriate for half-rigid tires. Cole and was often found ill-conditioned. Cho et al. [19] developed a
Huth [8] treated the pavementtire interaction problem as an mesh generation procedure for 3D automobile tire models in
elastic porous medium subjected to moving surface pressure which the detailed tread blocks with variable anti-skid depths
and analyzed the pavement response under tire loading. How- were considered. Firstly, tire body and tread mesh were con-
ever, the attenuation of inertia force was disregarded and the structed separately. Then they were assembled by the incompat-
elastic porous medium assumption was only applicable to the ible tying method. Although this meshing technique is believed
surface layer of the pavement. Baron et al. [9] investigated the to simulate tires properly, it is too complicated to be widely
Rayleigh wave propagation in the pavement, which was used. Li [20] and Zeng et al. [21] proposed a meshing procedure
assumed as a half-innite space. based on conformal mapping technique, which can conven-
Jones and Petyt [10] and Sheng et al. [11,12] dened the iently simulate complicated tire treads and obtain hexahedral
subgrade as an elastic half-space and utilized Fourier transform meshes with high quality.
to divide moving trafc loads into a combination of rectangular Wang and Al-Qadi [22] established 3D nite-element mod-
and linear loads to solve the dynamic responses at different els for tires and investigated the contact pressure distribution of
locations in a railway structure. Hung and Yang [13] assumed tires in conditions including stationary, free rolling, accelerat-
pavement structures as a visoelastic half-space system and ana- ing, and decelerating cases [2327]. To improve the calculation
lyzed the inuences of loading modes and speed on the dynamic efciency, Wang et al. [28,29] set up an equivalent material for
responses of pavement. the tire crown, which had the same stiffness as the tire crown. It
Hao and Ang [14] assumed that the trafc-induced ground is worth noting that the tire simulated in Wang et al. [28,29] are
vibrations consist of primarily Rayleigh waves induced by mov- semi-rigid radial tires, which are quite different from the rigid
ing forces and propagate along the surface of an elastic homoge- radial tires that heavy vehicles use in China. Unfortunately,
neous half-space. They utilized a single-axle two-degrees-of- there are very few studies on such tires for pavement responses.
freedom vehicle model and the theoretical solution derived by Therefore, it is of importance to develop nite-element models
Lamb for wave propagation on the surface of an elastic half- for rigid radial tires and analyze the corresponding distribution
space to derive a closed-form solution for ground vibration of contact pressure.
power spectral densities at various locations in the pavement.
The above analytical theories are all based on the half-space
assumption, under which the classic Kelvin solution can analyze
Methodology
pavement responses. Nevertheless, the half-space assumption is Hertz originally dened an elastic solid as quadric surface and
not always true for the pavement system. Additionally, the analyzed its deformation and contact behavior in 1882.

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CAO ET AL. ON TIREPAVEMENT CONTACT STRESS. PART 2 3

 
The Hertz contact is based on the following assumptions: pp0 R 3WR 1=3
(1) a
1. The contact surfaces are smooth and do not have the 2E 4E
same curvature,
The contact area is:
2. the contact stress is small,
3. each solid body is viewed as a half-innite elastic sphere, (2) Are pa2 pRd
and
4. there is no friction on surfaces. The displacement of contact is:
Deformation of two elastic solids after contact initiates is r2
shown in Fig. 1. Any contact point can be dened as the coordi- (3) z1 u
u z2 d  z1  z2 d 
2R
nate origin. The x-y plane is the common tangent plane for the
two surfaces and the z axle is the normal direction of the com- and
mon tangent plane from top to bottom. Distance between the pp 2  1=3
a2 0 9W 2
two surfaces at x r is z1 z2 as shown in Fig. 1. When a com- (4) d a R
R 2E 16RE2
pressive load W is applied, the two solids T1 and T2 move to-
ward each other and displace d1 and d2 , respectively. If The center of the contact area has the largest pressure. The
intrusion is allowed, the two spheres will overlap as shown by contact pressure on the contact area is described as follows:
the dashed lines in Fig. 1. However, deformation of the two con-
tacting elastic spheres will result in a contact area length of 2a (5) p p0 1  r=a2 1=2
that is shorter than the length of the dashed overlapping area.
Assume that the maximum contact pressure p0 is 1.5 times
The displacements of T1 and T2 are uz1 and uz2 .
larger than the average contact pressure, pm , then we have
The total deformation, d d1 d2 , is the relative move-
 1=3
ment distance from two points belonging to the two solids in z 3 3W 6WE2
(6) p0 pm
direction, respectively. d is caused by the surface displacement 2 2pa2 p3 R2
and deformation.
1 1  12 1  22
If the two solids are revolution ones, the contact area would (7)


E E1 E2
be a circular area with the origin as the center.
When the two spheres with radii of R1 and R2 is subject to where:
a load W, the radius of the contact region is assumed as a and E1 and 1 the elastic modulus and Poissons ratio of one
the distribution of contact pressure is elliptical. The contact solid, whereas
pressure at radius r is dened as pr. According to Hertz E2 and 2 the elastic modulus and Poissons ratio of the
theory: other solid.

FIG. 1
Illustration of Hertz contact between two elastic
objects.

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4 Journal of Testing and Evaluation

The compound curvature is: and transversely, exhibiting a nearly rectangular shape with a
pressure magnitude of 1.2 MPa. The width of the contact region
1 1 1
(8) reaches the full width of the tire and its length increases to
R R1 R2
0.185 m. The stress magnitude maintains 1.2 MPa, whereas the
length of the contact contour reaches 0.219 m when the load is
at 40 kN (Fig. 2(f)). At load classes of 50 kN (Fig. 2(g)), 60 kN
Vertical Contact Pressure of Rigid (Fig. 2(h)), 70 kN (Fig. 2(i)) and 80 kN (Fig. 2(j)), the stress mag-
nitude increases to 1.3 MPa, 1.9 MPa, 2.4 MPa, and 3.0 MPa,
Radial Tire respectively, whereas the length of the contact area reaches
Generally, the amplitude of contact pressure on semi-rigid 0.258 m, 0.290 m, 0.324 m, and 0.355 m, respectively. Table 1 and
radial tires ranges from 0.5 MPa to 0.7 MPa, which can increase Fig. 3 further show that an almost linear relationship exist
up to 1.0 MPa under overloading. A better understanding of the between the load class and the length of the contact region for a
contact region shape for rigid radial tires is critical to fully eval- rigid radial tire.
uate the pavement distress because of such tires. The contact
pressure distribution because of a rigid radial tire is signicantly
different from that because of a semi-rigid tire. As discussed in Contact Pressure of Rolling Rigid
the accompanying paper, the contact region caused by a rigid
tire resembling a rectangular shape maintains a roughly con-
Tires
stant width, whereas it increases longitudinally at larger vertical To further investigate the effect of acceleration, free rolling, and
loads. Additionally, the rigid radial tire has a load capacity 5 to braking of the rigid tire on the vertical contact pressure distri-
10 times that of the semi-rigid radial tire, which leads to signi- butions, the steady-state transport theory is implemented when
cantly larger contact pressure magnitudes, typically over the interaction between a rigid tire and pavement is simulated
1.0 MPa and reaching nearly 3.0 MPa. Pavement structures in using 3D nite-element models. The speed of the free rolling
China are typically subjected to a large number of overloading tires is set at 60 km/h. The friction coefcient of 0.3 is used. The
vehicles. From the analysis in the accompanying paper, heavy modeled rigid tire has a radius of 0.533 m with an internal ina-
or overloaded vehicles can substantially inuence the stress dis- tion pressure of 0.86 MPa and a load capacity of 4165 kg. The
tribution and magnitude in the pavement. Thus, it is paramount deformation of the tire at the load capacity is 36 mm. Steady-
to further study the effect of rigid radial tires used in heavy state contact pressure analysis of a rolling tire is similar to that
vehicles on pavement performance. of a static tire, except that a steady-state transport analysis is
Figure 2(a)2(c) illustrate the vertical contact pressure con- required to simulate the effect of acceleration, free rolling, and
tours on the rigid radial tires under vertical loads of 20 kN, braking.
40 kN, and 60 kN, respectively, under a frictionless condition. The criteria used to dene acceleration, free rolling, and
These load classes are typical of heavy vehicles or passenger braking are based on the difference between the linear velocity
buses, which are usually equipped with rigid tires to accommo- of the rigid tire at the center of the contact region and the prod-
date the load demands. These gures show that the pressure uct of the angular velocity at the tire center and the distance
contour resembles more an ellipse at lower vertical loads (e.g., between the centers of the tire and the contact region. A positive
20 kN) and gradually transitions to a rectangular region as the difference indicates the tire is undergoing acceleration and the
load class increases beyond 40 kN. The corresponding pressure more the difference, the larger the acceleration is. Free rolling
magnitudes at these load classes are 1.2 MPa, 1.2 MPa, and occurs to the tire when the difference equals 0, whereas braking
2.4 MPa, respectively. initiates when the difference becomes negative.
To further study the contact region shape of the rigid radial When the tire travels at 60 km/h, the linear velocity at the
tire with friction presenting at the contact interface, a series of tire center is 16.667 m/s. A linear velocity of 33.44 m/s at the
vertical load classes are considered starting at 20 kN with a tire center corresponds to a free rolling condition. If this veloc-
10 kN increment until reaching 80 kN. The friction coefcient is ity reduces to 31.44 m/s, braking then initiates. When simulat-
set at 0.5 for all seven considered load classes. The contact pres- ing the acceleration process, this velocity increases to 35.44 m/s.
sure contours corresponding to these load classes are plotted in Fig. 4(a)4(c) show the vertical contact stress contours of the
Fig. 2(d)2(j), respectively. Figure 2(d) shows that the contact tire under acceleration, free rolling, and braking conditions. The
region remains an ellipse when friction presents at a 20-kN load acceleration case shows the largest contact pressure magnitude
class while the pressure magnitude maintains at 1.2 MPa. The at 1.7 MPa, whereas free rolling yields the lowest at 1.2 MPa and
width of the ellipse almost equals the tire width, whereas the braking at 1.3 MPa. Figure 5(a)5(c) also plot the shear stress
length is approximately 0.14 m. At the 30-kN (Fig. 2(e)) load contours for the tire in the tire traveling direction. These gures
class, the contact region spreads further out both longitudinally show clearly that braking leads to the largest shear stresses with

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CAO ET AL. ON TIREPAVEMENT CONTACT STRESS. PART 2 5

FIG. 2 Vertical contact stress contour of the rigid tire with different loading levels and friction conditions between tire and pavement.

a magnitude of 1.3 MPa. The shear stress contours in the trans-


verse direction are given in Fig. 6(a)6(c) and exhibit insigni-
cant differences between the three tire rolling cases.
TABLE 1 Length of the tire interaction area under different load
classes.

Vertical Load Class (kN) Length of Contact Region (m)


Simplification of the Finite-Element
20 0.140
30 0.185
Model for Rigid Tire
40 0.219 The preceding analysis shows that for rigid radial tires the con-
50 0.258
tact region keeps increasing longitudinally when its width
60 0.290
reaches the full tire width at high vertical load classes. A linear
70 0.324
relationship between the length of the contact region and the
80 0.355
load class is also observed. Past research [30,31] proposed Eq 9

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6 Journal of Testing and Evaluation

W the vertical load applied to a tire,


FIG. 3 Relationship between the length of the tire interaction area and the P the ination pressure of the tire, and
load class.
g the gravitational acceleration.
Based on the data presented in Table 1, Eq 9 can be modi-
ed to predict the longitudinal contact region length obtained
in this study:

Wg
(10) Lx
2:5P

Equations 9 and 10 only differ between the constants.


Equations 1 through 8 are derived based on the Hertz con-
tact theory. In the case of pavementtire interaction, these equa-
tions can be further simplied. If medium 1 shown in Fig. 1
represents the pavement, the radius of medium 1 then equals
innity (R1 1) assuming the pavement is an innite plate;
thus:

1 1
to predict the length of the contact region under a given vertical (11)
R R2
load level:
In a two-dimensional scenario, medium 2 representing a
Wg
(9) Lx rigid tire can be ideally reduced to a circle, then R2 in Eq 11
2:16P
takes on the tire radius, whereas the contact radius (i.e., a) in
where: Eq 1 becomes the longitudinal length of the tire contact region.
Lx the longitudinal length of the contact region, Variable E2 in Eq 7 is the stiffness of a rigid tire that needs to be

FIG. 4
Vertical contact stress contour of the rigid tire under
different conditions.

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CAO ET AL. ON TIREPAVEMENT CONTACT STRESS. PART 2 7

FIG. 5
Longitudinal shear contact stress contour of the
rigid tire under different conditions.

solved. Because the transverse width of the tire contact area located at a third point near the rear axle. An ination pressure
stops increasing when the full tire width is engaged, variable  2 of 0.86 MPa is used for inating the tire models.
can be approximated by 0. Therefore, the relationship between Completed vehicle models with rigid radial tires are shown
E and E2 can be dened. Owing to the linear relationship in Figs. 8 and 9 considering two different approaches for model-
between the length of the tire contact region and the vertical ing the tires. The tire model shown in Fig. 8 is developed using
load, Eq 1 can be used to solve for the equivalent tire stiffness, E2. the procedure discussed in the accompanying paper, whereas
The above discussion demonstrates that the Hertz contact the other in Fig. 9 is created using the equivalent stiffness
theory can be applied to greatly simplify the nite-element method proposed in this paper. The tire model in Fig. 8 after
modeling process of a rigid radial tire by considering an equiva- meshing consists of nearly 15,000 elements for each tire and
lent homogeneous material constitutive model, thus eliminating requires heavily dense meshes to capture the steel wiring in a
the need for a complicated procedure to generate a tire model rigid radial tire, which often result in computation inefciencies
and improving computation efciency. For the case where the when solving the interaction equations between the pavement
surface response of the pavement is not of interest, the simpli- and tires using the central difference method. Contrarily, the
ed procedure has a great potential for application to research vehicle model (Fig. 9) with tire models developed using the
the interaction between pavement and tires. The rest of this equivalent stiffness method needs only approximately 13,000
paper focuses on implementing this equivalent tire model in elements (3D eight-node reduced integration element) in total,
addressing pavement structuretire interaction. which are less than the elements required for a single tire in the
The pavement structure modeled consists of ve layers of other model. The spring-damper system used for modeling the
different materials as shown in Fig. 7. The material properties of connection between the tire and the vehicle body consists of a
the pavement layers are given in Table 2. The tire considered is spring with an elastic modulus of 2,000,000UNIT and a damper
typical of a common vehicle type in Chinas EQ1168G1, which with a critical damping constant of 5000UNIT [33].
has a load-carrying capacity of 25,000 kg including self-weight The pavement model shown in Fig. 10 is 2.69 m deep, 10 m
[32]. The developed vehicle model is 900 cm long with two sus- wide, and 15 m long, meshed with over 59,000 three-
pension systems spaced 560 cm apart and the center of gravity dimensional eight-node reduced integration elements, among

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8 Journal of Testing and Evaluation

FIG. 6
Transverse shear contact stress contour of the rigid
tire under different conditions.

which 2464 elements are used to simulate the foundation The interaction between a vehicle and pavement can be
located far apart from the pavement structure. This pavement studied either statically or dynamically. In a static study, the
model is used for analyzing the pavement response under static response of the pavement to the gravity imposed by the vehicle
vehicle loading. can be generated to investigate the contact region pattern of the
tire and deformation and stress elds of the pavement. Addi-
tionally, theoretical solutions for static layered elastic systems
FIG. 7 Pavement structure cross section.
can be applied to verify the simulation results.
The deformation of the pavement subjected to the static
vehicle load shown in Fig. 11 exhibits a symmetric pattern with
deformations concentrated near the front and rear axles. The
largest deformation of 0.5 mm occurs at the locations beneath
the rear tires. This deformation agrees well with the theoretical
solution of 0.48 mm, which suggests the effectiveness and accu-
racy of the pavementvehicle interaction model. The difference
between the simulated and theoretical deformations is largely
because of the mesh density used in the analysis model in addi-
tion to the fact that the theoretical solution only applies to sin-
gle tire loading and innite pavement conditions.
The contact pressure contours under the rear axle in the
pavement is shown in Fig. 12. The magnitude of the contact
pressure reaches 2 MPa observed in pavement beneath the cen-
ter of the tire, whereas the rest contact region maintains a
roughly constant pressure at 0.7 MPa. The contact region shows
a bowl-like shape. Further analysis of the results indicates that
vehicle-induced pavement deformation concentrates in the

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CAO ET AL. ON TIREPAVEMENT CONTACT STRESS. PART 2 9

TABLE 2 Pavement structure and material properties.

Layer Thickness (cm) Compressive Modulus (MPa) Dynamic Modulus (MPa) Poissons Ratio
Asphalt course 15 1200 3000 0.35
Base 34 2000 5000 0.2
Subbase 20 1000 2500 0.3
Subgrade 200 80 80 0.4
Natural soil 80 80 0.4

FIG. 8
Vehicle model with rigid radial tires modeled using
detailed nite elements.

FIG. 9
Vehicle model with rigid radial tires modeled using
an equivalent stiffness method.

FIG. 10
Pavement nite-element model.

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10 Journal of Testing and Evaluation

FIG. 11
Vertical deformation contour of the pavement.

FIG. 12 Vertical contact pressure contour at the rear axle due to a static class. The magnitude of the vertical pressure contours was also
vehicle. found to be much greater than 0.7 MPa given in the Chinese
pavement codes.
In addition, the effect of a rolling tire on the vertical contact
pressure was also investigated with acceleration, free rolling,
and braking conditions considered for the tire.
Findings of the tirepavement interaction study were used
in conjunction with the Hertz contact theory to propose a simpli-
ed coupled vehicle tirepavement interaction model, which was
veried with theoretical solutions. This model of high computa-
tional efciency could be used for high-delity evaluation of the
performance of pavement structures under heavy vehicles.

References
[1] Fryba, L., Vibration of Solids and Structures Under Moving
Loads, Thomas Telford, London, 1999.
[2] Siddharthan, R. V., Sebaaly, P. E., and El-Desouky, M.,
Heavy Off-Road Vehicle TirePavement Interactions and
Response, J. Transport. Eng., Vol. 131, No. 3, 2005, pp.
239247.
[3] Siddharthan, R. V., Yao, J., and Sebaaly, P. E., Pavement
Strain From Moving Dynamic 3D Load Distribution,
J. Transport. Eng., Vol. 124, No. 6, 1998, pp. 557566.
contact region with the tires, whereas the total inuence area of [4] Siddharthan, R. V., Zar, Z., and Norris, G. M., Moving
the tires is within 3 times that of the contact area. Load Response of Layered Soil. Part 1: Formulation,
J. Eng. Mech., Vol. 119, No. 10, 1993, pp. 20522071.
[5] Siddharthan, R. V., Zar, Z., and Norris, G. M., Moving
Conclusions Load Response of Layered Soil. Part 2: Verication and
Application, J. Eng. Mech., Vol. 119, No. 10, 1993, pp.
A three-dimensional nite-element model was developed for 20722089.
analyzing the static contact interaction between the rigid radial [6] Zar, Z., Siddharthan, R. V., and Sebaaly, P. E., Dynamic
tire and the pavement. Parametric studies of the vertical load Pavement-Strain Histories From Moving Trafc Load,
J. Transport. Eng., Vol. 120, No. 5, 1994, pp. 821842.
effect showed that the contact region between a tire and pave-
[7] Hanazato, T., Ugai, K., Mori, M., and Sakaguchi, R.,
ment maintains constant transversely at the full tire width and Three-Dimensional Analysis of Trafc-Induced Ground
only increases longitudinally, whereas the length of the contact Vibrations, J. Geotech. Eng., Vol. 117, No. 8, 1991, pp.
region shows an almost linear relationship with the vertical load 11331151.

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