Incorporation of Loading Sequence in Computation of Nonlinear Cumulative Fatigue Damage for Asphalt Pavement Design

Miner’s rule is traditionally used for the computation of cumulative damage used in pavement design. However, there is a scope to improve upon the assumption of linear accumulation of damage, given that the damage accumulation may depend on the history of loading. The present chapter proposes a framework for the estimation of cumulative damage for any given loading sequence—in terms of the random arrival of vehicles with random wheel load values. The variations of elastic modulus with the number of repetitions for different single load values for any given asphalt pavement structure are assumed to be known. Simulation results are presented to show the effect of three different loading sequences.