Introduction/Goals

Durable pavement constructions for future traffic loads Coupled system pavement – tire – vehicle

Road infrastructures are one main precondition and an essential component of a competitive and successful industrialised society. Further, the infrastructure represents a huge economic worth.

While the development of new vehicles and intelligent transport concepts in Germany is mainly pushed by industry, big innovations in the field of pavement structures are rarely known in the recent decades. On the one hand, this deficit is due to missing research funds that have to be mainly supplied - in contrast to commercial automotive products - by public resources and on the other hand due to relatively strict and inflexible regulations, that are little suitable to stimulate the creativity and innovative capacity of German industry, engineers and scientists.

These circumstances contributed to the fact, that it is worked not or rarely with concepts and methodic approaches of progressive engineering sciences at building and maintenance of pavement infrastructures. Thus, often inadequate and little durable solutions are obtained. To overcome this problem and to prepare the pavement infrastructure for future requirement, a paradigm change at dimensioning, structural realisation and maintenance of pavements is aimed. The research group intends to develop the scientific base for this.

The superior goal of the research group is to provide a coupled thermo-mechanical model for a holistic physical analysis of the pavement – tyre – vehicle system. Based on this model, pavement structures and materials might be optimised so that new demands become compatible to the main goal durability of the structures and the materials.

The development of the scientific base for these new and qualitatively improved modelling approaches requires a holistic procedure through coupling of theoretical numerical and experimental approaches as well as an interdisciplinary and linked working on coupled pavement – tyre – vehicle system. This interdisciplinary research will provide a deeper understanding of the physic of the complete system and progress in terms of improved and therefore more durable and sustainable structures.

Objects:

• development of scientific basis for solution of current and future material, structural and economical challenges in pavement engineering
• sustainable use of energy, raw material and financial resources
• understanding of physical interrelations and interactions of the coupled complex system and its subsystems
• holistic experimental and theoretical numerical investigation of the coupled processes at different scales
• description of interrelations beyond length and time scales
• development of intelligent methods for characterisation of load parameters, functional surface properties and material properties