Theoretical Development of Localized Pseudo Damage

Damage is accumulated by vehicles as they travel. Current damage methods allow for the total accumulated damage to be identified; however, they do not allow for identification of the road segments that induce the largest component of the damage. The objective of this article is to develop a measure, Localized Pseudo Damage (LPD), which defines the amount of damage each individual road excitation contributes to the total accumulated pseudo damage. A novel theoretical development of LPD along with analytical and discrete simulation analyses is presented. The results show that the LPD is causal and correctly identifies the location and magnitude of damaging events. This is further demonstrated with the application of the method on a real road surface.