Evaluation of Stress, Strain and Deflection of Flexible Pavements

In Ethiopia the number and type of traffic increases from day to day. This enforces the construction of road infrastructures that needs economical and safe design of highways. Most highway found in Ethiopia are concrete asphalt. Todays, the failure of surface of concrete asphalt highways are common before the expected design period. For the example Bako to Nekemte concrete asphalt highway/ has become a critical issue in our country. The most common factors that cause stress, strain and deflection of the roads are loads and pressures that come from vehicles. Those factors are; modulus of elasticity, Poisson’s ratio and thickness of each layer, the load magnitude, contact pressure and location are defined for each load considered. Finite element method is a numerical analysis technique to obtain the stress, strain and deflection of each pavement layers.