"Full-Scale Testing of Pavement Response"

Three pavement sections in southern Sweden were instrumented in late 1991. Each section have instruments for measuring the strain at the bottom of the asphalt layer, vertical stress and strains in the subgrade and temperatures at different depths. The purpose was to evaluate different theoretical methods for determining stresses, strains and deflections in pavement structurers.Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) test were done on the test sections, and stresses and strains were measured both under FWD loading and under a rolling wheel load. Different back-analysis procedures were used to derive layer moduli from FWD testing. The forward calculated stresses and strains were then compared to the measured values. The tests were done under different climatic conditions, the latest in November 1996, where almost all of the gauges were still functioning.Of the different methods used for back-analysing FWD data and for calculating the stresses and the strains, the simple method based on Odemark's transformations and Boussinesq's equations appeared to be as good as, or better than, the more sophisticated methods using layered elastic theory or the Finite Element Method.