Numerical simulation tool for paving block structures assessed by means of full-scale accelerated pavement tests.

Block pavements are an attractive alternative to asphalt and concrete pavements, especially in communal areas. Architects and urban planners would like to take advantage of various shapes, colours and textures of paving blocks in order to achieve a higher quality of urban space if the performance of block pavements could be better predicted to avoid large horizontal displacements of chipped stone corners and rutting. Unfortunately, the computational performance prediction of paving block structures is more complex than that for flexible pavements with homogeneous surface layers of asphalt concrete. The influence of the large number of vertical joints between paving blocks on the overall mechanical performance has not been considered sufficiently within computational tools yet. The proposed numerical simulation tool is able to take into account the complex mechanical behaviour of sand-filled joints as well as the non-linear mechanical behaviour of the underlying base courses. Joints are modelled using a Mohr-Coulomb-type friction model with the normal stresses non-linearly related with joint opening. Three different experimental set-ups were developed for the identification of the model parameters. The base behaviour was modelled using the Drucker-Prager cap model. The paper shows that the proposed tool predicts reasonable deformations and stresses in block pavements. The results of the simulations were compared with measured stresses from the full-scale accelerated pavement testing and a good agreement was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]