Impact of Traffic Overload on Road Pavement Performance

Traffic on a road pavement is characterized by a large number of different vehicle types, and these can be considered in pavement design by using truck factors to transform the damage they apply to the pavement to the damage that would be applied by a standard axle. The truck factors to convert trucks into standard axles or the load equivalent factors to convert axles into standard axles are defined by considering the average loads for each axle. This process includes the vehicles that travel with axle loads above the maximum legal limit. There are also a substantial number of overloaded vehicles in terms of total vehicle weight. These axles/vehicles cause significant damage to the pavements, increasing the pavement construction and rehabilitation cost. Thus, this paper investigates the impact of overloaded vehicles on road pavements by studying the truck factors for different vehicle cases applied to a set of pavements composed of five different asphalt layer thicknesses and five different subgrade stiffness moduli. The study revealed that the presence of overloaded vehicles can increase pavement costs by more than 100% compared to the cost of the same vehicles with legal loads. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.