Dynamic Investigation of Pavements

Abstract

The design of pavement structures is usually carried out under the assumption of bonded interfaces between the various layers. However, interface defects exist leading to a different stress diagram, which reduces the bearing capacity of the roadway. Mechanical impacts in a broad range of frequencies, give different responses according to the presence or the absence of defect. According to the intensity and the frequency of the impact, the physical phenomena differ, leading to different measurement and data processing. The paper presents different experiments using impacts on test sites, and compares the practice of these methods. It illustrates the problem of the coupling between the sensor and pavement surface to sound. It also compares the results of the method in different frequencies ranges.