CHAPTER 5

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

5.1 SUMMARY

In this study, the stress-deformation response of flexible pavement is investigated for

the better understanding of stress distribution as well as displacement at different depth
of the pavement under wheel loading of heavily loaded truck using three dimensional
finite element (FE) method. The result of this numerical study provides a better
understanding of the impact of the several parameters subjected to pavement system.
The outcomes of this study shows how stress is distributed as well as the causes of such
distribution. Further, it also shows the deviation of stress for various parameter that are
considered in this study. Besides showing stress distribution, it also focuses on the
displacement variation that is also varied significantly. In the following section, all the
chapters of this study is discussed one by one.

Chapter 1 briefly explains the reason of this study as well as application of this study.

In Chapter 2, a brief discussion on previous studies has been conducted. This study help
us to find the scope of this study. From this chapter, it is ensured why Numerical study
on stress-deformation response is necessary.

Chapter 3 discusses about the working methodology. It begins with geometry creation,
property assignment, load assignment, contact modelling which is followed by mesh
generation. In this part the analyses have been done for two different contact pressure
which is later compared with each other to investigate the deviation.

Chapter 4 describes the stress-deformation response of flexible pavement for different

parameters. The difference of stress distribution and subsequent displacement of the
pavement layers. The analyses results are then compared based on parameters like
modulus of elasticity, thickness of different layers and tire contact pressure. From these
comparison the stress-deformation response is investigated.

73
Chapter 5: Summary and Conclusions

5.2 CONCLUSIONS

The study of stress-deformation response of flexible pavement has given us many

important findings. Some of them are given below:

 With the increase of depth from the top surface, both the stresses and
deformation non-linearly decrease.
 There is significant variation in total displacement due to the change in
subgrade modulus whereas the change due to other parameters are negligible.
 Wheel load has also significant influences on stress-deformation response in
the pavement layers.

74