Methodology to quantify the real vertical load applied to the pavement

Highway networks attend society as routes for personal and commercial transports. Recurrent loadings, especially the vertical ones, imposed by the wheels of vehicles are assumed to deteriorate the pavement structure during its usage. The economics of pavement project consist of a compromise between the higher initial cost of high-strength pavement sections and the higher maintenance cost of low-strength alternatives. Regarding the importance of the road transportation and its correct maintenance nowadays, the evaluation of the vertical load applied to the pavement come to be a relevant theme, especially when few studies present results based on real measurements. Finally, the vertical load applied to the pavement can be simulated with some software available on the market, but the correlations with real measurements are not always presented. Within this scenario, the main objective of this paper is to present a proposal of a methodology to quantify experimentally this vertical load applied to the pavement in road transportation. Based on an instrumentation with metal-foil strain gauges, the measurements with this methodology were performed on a public highway in the state of Paraná (Brazil), which had a known value of International Roughness Index (IRI - a standard scale for road roughness), as well as on a proving ground. By using the instrumented leaf springs as calibrated load cells, it was possible to observe the influence of some usual road events (such as speed bumps, braking, corners, lane changes and potholes) on the load applied to the pavement. © 2019, Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering. Production and hosting by Springer Nature.