Subsurface cavities in the asphalt pavement which can cause road depression and cave-in accidents influence on the safety of pedestrians and vehicle drivers in the urban area. The existence of subsurface cavity can increase the tensile strain at the bottom of asphalt layer which is an indicator of fatigue cracking potential, and leads to the weakening of the pavement structural capacity. In this study, the finite element (FE) analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between the critical pavement responses and influencing factors, such as cavity depth and size, asphalt layer thickness, and asphalt concrete modulus. The surface deflections and tensile strains calculated from the ABAQUS FE program were compared to those from ILLIPAVE. It is found from this comparison that there are a good relationship between two analysis results. A three dimensional finite element model which is essential to simulate the hexahedral cavity were used to generate the synthetic database of critical pavement responses. To validate the developed model, the deflection data obtained from field Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) testing in four different locations were compared to FE deflections. It is found that the center deflections obtained from the FWD testing and FE analysis are similar to each other with an error values of 2.7, 4.4, 5.5, and 11.9 % respectively. The FE model developed in this study seems to be acceptable in simulating actual field cavity condition. On the basis of the data in the database, various analyses were conducted to estimate the effect of influencing factors on the critical pavement responses. It was found that the tensile strain at the bottom of asphalt layer is affected by all the factors but the most affected by the cavity depth and asphalt concrete modulus. Further studies are recommended to properly account for the effect of cavity’s geometry to pavement response.

• Wang Soo Lee(PhD student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, Korea)
• Yeon Woo Choi(Head of the division, Road Management Division, Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul, Korea)
• Hyun Jong Lee(Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, Korea)
• Hee Mun Park(Research Fellow, Highway Research Department, Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building)