Towards road pavement response under moving loads

The road network is one of the major assets in our countries. A proper management is essential to guarantee an adequate quality of life and economic growth. This paper presents the effort undertaken for monitoring of a road section with embedded strain gauges. The experimental site is located in Corbas (close to Lyon, France). A 5 cm-thick wearing course made of BBSG (French acronym for “Beton Bitumineux Semi Grenu”) was placed over a pre-existing road covering an area of 6.4 m × 30 m. The pavement was instrumented with six asphalt strain gauges connected to a data acquisition system called PEGASE. An experimental lab campaign was necessary for the assessment of the exact road stratification. The measurement sessions in the trial section were performed with a known loading truck at different temperatures, speeds, and trajectories. Results show a high sensibility of the measurements to the above-mentioned parameters. The mechanical behaviour of the pavement was assessed in the Viscoroute© software by using...