Permanent Deformation of Flexible Pavements

In this chapter, permanent deformation (rutting) in bituminous pavements is treated as a viscoelastic flow phenomenon. The correspondence principle is used to deduce the permanent deformation of a linear viscoelastic pavement system using a linear elastic pavement model supplied with suitable viscous parameters and vehicle loads. A simple method is introduced for determining the viscosity of asphalt mixtures from routine test data, for a wide range of environmental conditions. Rut depth predictions are compared with experimental data from a full-scale accelerated loading test in France. Agreement is generally good indicating the applicability of this linear rutting model.