摘要
Rutting is a chronic disease in asphalt pavements despite several mitigation measures. Although many attempts have been made by both researchers and practitioners to develop rutting prediction models, each model, however, has certain inherent limitations due to assumptions and data used during the development of the model. Placement of an asphalt overlay is the most common method used in Zambia to rehabilitate existing asphalt pavements. The objective of this research is to go towards developing a national rutting prediction model for use in tropical hot climates based on default finite element creep and elasto-visco-plastic analysis tools in ABAQUS. Dynamic modulus and repeated load tests are conducted on overlay mixtures designed based on the pavement residual structural adequacy from deflection tests to provide material properties for the constitutive rutting model. Unified, three dimensional linear viscoelastic boundary value problems were formulated for each five national representative pavement sections. In general, the FE （finite element） creep and elasto-visco-plastie rutting evolutions were in agreement with the measured laboratory scaled one third mobile load simulators. Performance ranking of the validated models revealed optimal pavement system combination suitable for calibration. The study recommends future directions for local adoption of the South African mechanistic-empirical design method currently being developed.
