This paper approaches the influence of the variation of load per axle and tire pressure on the recoverable superficial deflections in a pavement structure of the VCS 346 unpaved road taken as representative of the secondary road net of Viçosa-MG, Brazil. The program of study considered the following analysis: (i) traffic volume counting including 2C type commercial vehicles; (ii) predicted recoverable superficial deflections in function of the available data from the study; (iii) structure of the pavement including data from the materials of its layers. By the analyses, it was verified that the application of more critical loading levels affected significantly the pavement serviceable life and depending on the combination of axle load and tire pressure, road pavement serviceable life could be reduced by 89%. In this study, it was also investigated the application of two methods to measure sub-grade reinforcement layer thickness of unpaved roads. One of these two methods was empirical, the DNIT's Flexible Pavement Design criteria and the other was based on elastic theory applied to a two layer system. The use of the elastic theory was more adequate to measure unpaved roads improved with wearing courses (two layer system) proved to be the best procedure for designing unpaved road systems.
Axle load; Tire pressure; Pavement performance
