Impact of Hyper-Viscoelastic Tire Contact Stresses on Pavement Responses

This study used loaded flexible pavement simulations to evaluate the impact of temperature-dependent and temperature-independent tire–pavement contact stresses on pavement responses. A simulation matrix considered interstate and low-volume pavement configurations under three temperature conditions, wherein the pavement surface was in equilibrium with a uniform tire–temperature profile. Critical strain responses, in line with conventional pavement analysis schemes, and bulk pavement behavior via domain analysis were completed. The response differences between hyper-elastic and hyper-viscoelastic dual-tire assembly loading were minimal due to similarity in contact stress distributions. Such findings may differ for other tire configuration (e.g., wide-base tire) loading.