Camiones de alto tonelaje y su impacto en ciclo de vida de pavimentos asfálticos

in recent years a discussion of the technical-economic feasibility of introduce the heavy load trucks (cat) in goods transport fleet was started. this truck configurations overpass the maximum gross weight of 45 t permitted in chile. in chile there not exist experience of using this type of trucks, whence is relevant to study the global impact of it over the interurban transport system. this paper discusses the impact of heavy load trucks over asphalt pavements. using a mechanistic-empirical framework, the impact of two types of cat, long and short bitrén, and a one and two units 45 tons trucks were compared along the life-cycle of the pavement. assessment considers different pavement configurations, weather conditions and traffic levels, typical of the bio bio region. the mechanistic-empirical assessment was performed using the alize-lcpc pavement design tool and the deterioration models of the asphalt institute. for comparing deteriorations, the life-cycle was assessed using the miner law implemented in the mechanist-empirical pavement design guide, mepdg. results show that the one unit truck induces the greater damage over the pavement and that the two unit truck induces the lower damage. the long bitren (75 tons) induce a slightly lower impact than the short bitren. however it was found evidence that the cat induce the greater rutting in the pavement surface, which increases linearly if the gross weight of the truck increases.