General formulation for multilayered pavement systems

A formulation for the analysis of a general multilayered pavement system is developed in a manner analogous to that followed for conventional asphalt concrete pavements. The Burmister analytical solution is expanded to the general case of a pavement system in which each member may be treated as a Burmister layer, a Winkler spring bed, or a Kirchhoff plate. The proposed formulation is, therefore, applicable to the interior loading condition of both asphalt and Portland cement concrete pavements, and it has been coded in FORTRAN into the program DIPLOMAT. The program allows the user to idealize pavement members using dissimilar models and may contribute significantly toward the development of a "unified" approach to pavement analysis. The program has been compared with available closed-form solutions, and with computerized layered elastic analysis (the computer program BISAR). Excellent agreement has been found in both instances. Applications of the program DIPLOMAT are also presented.