New AASHTO Equivalency Factors of Armoured Vehicles with Rubber Tires on Flexible Pavement

Abstract

Presented in this paper is a study to find new AASHTO equivalency factors of military armoured vehicles with rubber tires on flexible pavement. Four types of military armoured vehicles with rubber tires were studied, namely Stryker, CM31, Cougar Ridgback, and HMMWV. A measure of the damaging effect of military armoured vehicles with rubber tires was achieved by correlating their equivalent loads with the AASHTO equivalency factors. The equivalent load was developed on the basis of mechanistic - empirical approach. It was found that the damaging effect of the studied military armoured vehicles with rubber tires is 0.017 to 6.87 times the damaging effect of the standard 18 kips (80 kN) axle load depending on the thickness of asphalt layer.