Saskatchewan’s economy depends on bulk commodity transport including agriculture, logging, livestock, oil, and mined mineral resources. The primary mode of transport for these bulk goods is by truck. Saskatchewan’s economy is dependent on interprovincial and international trucking transport and relies on over 25,000 centerline kilometers of primary and secondary highways to move these goods. The Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure policies and regulations enforce truck type and axle weight on Saskatchewan provincial highways. Recently, the Ministry decided to investigate the effect of a 9-axle B-train loading configuration on Saskatchewan’s highway network. The purpose of this study was to quantify the damage caused by a 9-axle B-train truck on Saskatchewan road structures with different axle loads and to compare it to the damage caused by a typically loaded 8-axle B-train truck configuration. This analysis was carried out using a computational mechanics road model that considers non-elastic material behaviour, Saskatchewan field state conditions, pavement structures, materials, road construction, climatic effects, and truck configurations. For this study, damage is defined as the permanent deformation of the roadway directly beneath the truck tires after one 10 s truck cycle. This study found that when loaded past its baseline load, the 9-axle B-train truck resulted in more damage than an 8-axle B-train truck, when comparing across an asphalt concrete pavement in good and poor condition, under freeze-thaw and high temperature climatic effects.
