Aspects of Mechanistic Analysis of Lightly Cementitious Pavement Materials

Inthispaper compressionfailureasa resultof traffic loading in lightly cementitious pavement ma-terials is discussed. The investigation was donewith the aid of mechanistic analysis, and includesboth surface and depth deflection measurementson an actual pavement from which linear elasticmoduli values were backcaIculated. This wasdone to evaluate the «actual» stresses between therelatively thin surfacing and the top of the cemen-titious base layer. Finite element analysis with theILLI-PA YEcode and variable Mohr-Coulomb fai-lure criteria aided in this evaluation and it wasfound that «actual» stresses appeared to be 4 to7times higher than those predicted by linear elas-tic theory. These stresses are also approximatelytwice the «in situ» strength of the base material,and therefore aid in the analytical explanation ofthe compression failure mode of thesepavementmaterials.