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The loading on the surface of a concrete pavement consists of vehicles with axle load P and contact pressure p traveling at speed v. the relationship between these variables is:

 

 

where

 

P     axle load for heavy vehicles (kN)

p     contact (surface) pressure which can be taken as the tyre pressure of heavy vehicles

v     vehicle speed

e     constant which has a value of 0.15 for typical South African pavements and is calculated from finite element analysis or the Pickett and Ray influence charts (5).

g     constant which is dependent on the extent of load transfer at joints/cracks. g has a value of 0.12 for excellent load transfer and 0.25 for no load transfer.

 

This was obtained from actual measurements on the N3 concrete pavement trials.