Actual expenses
Dimensioning of road pavements

Two disruptive factors mean that the actual loads exerted on the pavement are higher than the limit loads prescribed by regulations.

• The first is related to the dynamic effects that occur when the vehicle is in motion. Some of these effects, such as the overloading of the outside wheels when cornering, or the overloading of the front wheels during braking, remain very moderate. On the other hand, vehicle oscillations due to unevenness of the pavement induce brief but repeated overloads, the instantaneous value of which may be of the same order as the static load, leading to a doubling of the effort on the pavement. In fact, these dynamic effects are rarely taken into account in pavement design. They are implicitly included in the safety coefficients of practical design methods.

• More notable, because permanent...