Abstract
This study focuses on modeling a rigid pavement slab on expansive soil in extreme climates to understand the interaction between weather, pavement, and soil. Lightweight superstructures such as pavements are particularly prone to damage due to the differential settlement of expansive soils. In the context of climate change, the occurrence of severe droughts followed by intense rainfall has risen, causing severe impacts on crack initiation and development, and thus infiltration patterns in the structures built on expansive soils. Pavements are typically designed for a limited lifespan, and early failure may occur if climate change is not considered during design. This is especially important in coastal areas when coastal flooding becomes more frequent. The interplay between climates, soils, and pavements leads to a spatial and temporal change in soil moisture and even soil structure, causing significant variations of volume change. Despite the dominant impact of expansive soils on pavement systems, a deep understanding of their role in pavement structural behavior remains challenging to both the researchers and the practitioners. This paper addresses this gap through a comprehensive numerical study using two-dimensional (2D) finite element modeling. We adopted the unsaturated soil constitutive relationship to understand the stress changes during the expansion and shrinkage of expansive soil. We employed four user-defined subroutines in ABAQUS to perform a coupled hydro-mechanical stress analysis. The study uses historical climate events as a reference to assess the impact of climate events on pavements. Mechanical, hydraulic, and soil-vegetation-atmosphere (SVA) boundary conditions are considered. The numerical findings highlight the vulnerability of pavements founded on expansive soils to climate change-induced events and indicate that a coupled hydro-climate-geotechnical analysis is necessary. Unprecedented climatic events lead to more uneven settling of pavements on expansive soils, shortening their life cycle. The research helps foresee how pavements on expansive soils will perform over the long run and provides useful advice for engineering methods and designing infrastructure in a rapidly changing environment.
Recommended Citation
E. Agarwal et al., "2D Numerical Modeling of Pavements on Expansive Soil in Extreme Climates," Geotechnical Special Publication, no. GSP 366, pp. 59 - 68, American Society of Civil Engineers, Jan 2025.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784485996.007
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
2D Finite Element Modeling; Expansive Soils; Extreme Climates; Pavements; Unsaturated Soils
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0895-0563
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 American Society of Civil Engineers, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2025
