The Pavers System a Knowledge Sharing Concept in the Design and Assessment of Road, Airfield and Industrial Pavement

Rigid pavement thickness design is either still based on the classical Westergaard solutions or is based on a more comprehensive finite element rigid pavement model to resolve the shortcomings of the layered elastic Burmister model. The latter gives a principally better representation of the slab edges and joints. However, because of the ability to quickly compute edge stresses, the attractiveness of Westergaard's solutions have never diminished. The classical discrepancy between the Westergaard-Winkler (joints) model and the Burmister model (no joints) can be overcome with a Westergaard-Pasternak model. The Pasternak foundation is a more realistic representation and encompasses the disadvantages of the Westergaard-Winkler or Burmister multi-layer model, while the great advantages of Westergaard's model (edge and corner loading) are maintained. By using closed formed solutions, it is possible to calculate the effect of multiple loads at located at random positions on a slab. For practical use, the pavement models have been implemented a software tool called ‘PAVERS.’ This tool can be used for design and reversed-design purposes for road, airfield and industrial pavement. The reverse-design can be based on FWD surveys. The tool can be used for flexible pavements (with cemented bases) too. However, this paper mainly focuses on rigid pavement design and evaluation.