The rationality analysis of 2D finite element method in the calculation of asphalt pavement mechanical response

2D finite element method (FEM) has been used in the asphalt pavement mechanics calculation. In order to analyze its rationality, elastic multilayer theory has been applied to analyze the asphalt pavement mechanical response under double circular vertical uniformly distributed load. Deflection, tensile stress on pavement bottom and compression strain on top of subgrade calculated based on elastic multilayer theory is compared with the results using 2D FEM. The analysis results show that deflection, tensile stress on pavement bottom and compression strain on top of subgrade computed by 2D FEM have discrepancy with the results by elastic multilayer theory. The discrepancy of maximum tensile stress between elastic multilayer theory and 2D FEM improves along with the increase of structural layer depth, but the two methods can get similar variation of the results. It is seen that applying 2D FEM without any analysis to calculate asphalt pavement mechanics is inaccurate and unreasonable.