Study of healing effect on mechanical behavior of a smart asphalt pavement and permanent deformations due to a moving load in the framework of finite element analysis

Self-healing polymers are a class of smart materials that have attracted many researchers due to their unique ability. These materials are able to heal part of the damage without the need to identify the site. In order to study the behavior of these polymers, a thermodynamically consistent model is proposed to predict the mechanical response. Along with this, the implicit time-discrete form of the constitutive model is presented in order to utilize in ABAQUS software by UMAT subroutine. In the discretization, the Newton-Raphson method has been used to update internal variables such as viscoplastic strain components. Considering the calibration of the material parameters by the experimental results of the asphalt sample, the movement of vehicle on the desired pavement has simulated. In this research, a detailed explanation of how to perform the finite element analysis of mechanical behavior of asphalt pavements is presented using constitutive model and its implicit discretization. In the following, its validation with existing experimental results is also carried out. Next, a comparison between the simulations is performed without and with healing effect. From the results of finite element analysis, the important role of healing in the life of the pavement can be noted, which can increase the recovery of damage up to 20%.