Catalogue proposal of concrete self-blocking blocks pavements for urban fields

Concrete self-blocking blocks (CSB), initially addressed to urban field in order to have a secondary role as simple superficial finiture element of spots not suitable for vehicles, or as places for mainly pedestrian traffic and gas stations, are today largely revalued, so that they are used also for urban pavements. In the last years road field researchers have addressed a lot of attention to this kind of superstructure, giving several contributes to the study of the structural response of the pavements in CSB, revealing a good structural effectiveness, combined with a well known architectonic value. In big part of the recent scientific production, available in literature and written in order to fill the lack in the structural calculation of the pavements in CSB, the Authors use methods and criteria that have an analogy with bituminous and concrete pavements. In this paper the authors, following the aim of giving a catalogue of pavements in CSB in urban field, arranging an original design instrument of road superstructures based on FEM analysis by means of the ANSYS applicative of Swanson Analysis System Inc. In particular, using an important functionality of ANSYS named APDL (Ansys Parametric Design Language), a model of design has been defined able to give a totally parameterised solution. The applicative (macro ANSYS) arranged , called by the Authors MAC3DFEA, allowed to easily change, in every run of the analysis, the geometry of the model and the characteristics of the model and the characteristics of the materials used.