How Pad Heating Affects the Design of Asphalt Pavements with Embedded Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer: A Multi-Mechanism Model

Dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) pads embedded in asphalt release heat. This study quantifies how that heat changes the governing distress, the service life and the required asphalt thickness of motorway pavements. A transient axisymmetric conduction model of the pad, combined with a one-dimensional climate model, supplies pavement temperatures to layered elastic traffic-fatigue and rutting analyses, binder grade selection and a field-calibrated thermal-fatigue check; the empirical coefficients are adopted from the literature, and one auxiliary modulus–temperature relation is fitted to published data. The model covers eight climates, power classes of 0–100 kW, 2000–10,000 ESAL/day and asphalt thicknesses of 100–400 mm under two literature-based heat-release scenarios. Without DWPT, a 20-year life requires 190–330 mm of asphalt, governed by traffic fatigue, except in the hot desert climate, where rutting governs and 320–370 mm is required. If the pad heat does not change the structural response, DWPT leaves the traffic-fatigue life unchanged but, at 22 kW, doubles (Scenario A) or raises by one third (Scenario B) the 20-year rut depth and raises the required binder grade by up to five grades. Traffic-following heating multiplies the thermal-fatigue damage at the bottom of a 200 mm asphalt layer by 11–52, whereas continuous heating reduces it. Pad-heat softening under the wheel and pad-induced ageing matter more than any heat-source input, so the thicknesses are screening estimates for preliminary design, not project-level values.