Investigation into Top-Down Cracking of Asphalt Pavements in North Carolina

Top-down cracking has become a commonly reported cracking mechanism in asphalt pavements worldwide. In top-down cracking, a crack initiates at the surface of an asphalt concrete pavement and propagates to the bottom of the asphalt pavement layer. Because the location and governing state of stress for top-down cracking are different from those for bottom-up cracking, analysis of pavement cracking performance must be robust enough to account for the complex mechanisms that are involved in top-down cracking. This study applies the viscoelastic continuum damage finite element model to the evaluation of two pavement sections in North Carolina where top-down cracking has been identified. Small specimen geometries are used to perform simplified viscoelastic continuum damage testing on individual asphalt layers obtained from field cores. This testing model and the Fourier finite element program are used together for pavement cracking performance simulations, and the joint model uses the structure and layer material properties obtained from the two study pavements. The simulation results clearly support the propensity of these pavements to exhibit top-down cracking. In addition to laboratory testing and analysis, the deflection-based method suggested by Uhlmeyer et al. is applied to the data obtained from pavement sections with known crack initiation locations, and that method's validity is investigated. The Uhlmeyer method uses the AREA parameter, which is determined from falling weight deflectometer deflections, and pavement thicknesses. The analysis results show a clear difference in the AREA versus pavement thickness relationship between the pavement sections with top-down cracking and those with full-depth cracking.