Evaluation on Distribution Characteristics of Pore Water Pressure within Saturated Pavement Structure Based on the Proposed Tire-Fluid-Pavement Coupling Model

Abstract

To investigate the flow characteristics of pore water in asphalt pavement and the variation law of the pore water pressure under vehicle loading, a novel method based on BA network and quartet structure generation set method was proposed to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) pavement model with pores. The permeability coefficient and the gradation curve were adopted to evaluate the reliability and stability of the random growth pavement model. Then, the tire-fluid-pavement coupling model was established with FLUENT 3D based on the fluid Mie–Gruneisen state equation. According to the built fluid-solid coupling model, the pressure-velocity coupled finite volume algorithm was applied to study the distribution of the pore water pressure in asphalt pavement. Results show that the pore water pressure in asphalt pavement decays periodically with time under vehicle loading. For different types of asphalt pavement, the pore water pressure in open-graded friction course (OGFC) pavement is the smallest during the whole process. Moreover, the peak values of the pore water pressure decrease in the order of asphalt concrete (AC) pavement, stone mastic asphalt (SMA) pavement, and OGFC pavement. The maximum negative value of the pore water pressure is generally less than 0.3 times the maximum positive values. As for saturated pavement pores, the pore water pressure is hardly affected by the water film thickness. The positive peak value of the pore water pressure increases on an approximate parabolic curve as the vehicle speed improves gradually, while the negative one remains largely unchanged. The results are expected to help reduce tire hydroplaning risk and provide guidance for the selection of asphalt mixtures of drainage asphalt pavement.