The Bowl-shaped Distribution Load Diagram for Pavement Design

A new type of load diagram for pavement design, namely "the bowl-shaped distribution load", is proposed in this paper. As compared with the traditional uniformly distributed load widely adopted in many countries, the results of stress calculation with bowl-shaped distribution load are more reasonable and the calculated pressure distribution is also closer to the tire pressure measured.Since the computed contact stresses at the border of loading surface in an elastic layered system should never be infinited under the action of monotone horizontal bowl-shaped distribution load, so the proposed distribution diagram presents a promising future to design and computation of flexible pavement in which the combined action of vertical and horizontal loads can be considered simultaneously.