Damaging Effect of Tracked Armoured Vehicles on Flexible Pavement

Abstract

Presented in this paper is a new study of the AASHTO equivalency factorsof military tracked armoured vehicles on flexible pavement. Two types of militarytracked armoured vehicles were studied, namely Challenger 2 tank and MT-LB-Ttracked armoured vehicle. A measure of the damaging effect of military trackedarmoured vehicle loads was achieved by correlating their equivalent loads with theAASHTO equivalency factors. The equivalent load was developed on the basis ofmechanistic - empirical approach. It was found that the damaging effect of thestudied military tracked armoured vehicle loads is 0.039 to 5.750 times thedamaging effect of the standard 18 kips (80 kN) axle load depending on thethickness of asphalt layer. It was found that the damaging effect of militarytracked armoured vehicle loads on flexible pavements of major highways andmain principal roads is much more than its damaging effect on the flexiblepavement of local and secondary roads. It was found also, that tracked armouredvehicles have a severe damaging effect on the functional serviceability of surfaceasphalt layer in terms of deformation and strains due to the effect of rigid trackchain.

Keywords

• military tracked armoured vehicles
• aashto equivalency factors
• flexible pavements
• and damaging effect