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Abstract: Longitudinal cracks can influence the spread of stress in pavement structure, thereby affecting the pavement deflections. The effects of longitudinal cracks on the falling weight deflectometer (FWD) deflections of pavements with granular base (GB) were investigated and evaluated in this study. The finite element method (FEM) was used to simulate the intact and longitudinal-cracked pavements with GB undermeasured data. Various crack locations, crack widths, asphalt concrete (AC) layer thicknesses, and subgrade moduli were considered in this study. Comparison between the FWD deflections of intact and cracked pavements shows that longitudinal cracks close to the loading center can have significant effects on the deflections of pavements with GB, and the deflections of cracked pavements can be 25% greater than those of intact pavements. The effects of longitudinal cracks are negligible when cracks are located at more than 0.6 m away from the loading center. In general, the influences of crack width on deflections can be ignored. Longitudinal cracks have greater effects on the deflections of GB pavements with a thicker AC layer and a softer subgrade.
