Traffic loading and environmental factors are among the most serious variables that cause the spoilage of flexible pavements and lead to a decrease in their design life. The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of axle load raise and the change in resilient modulus on the flexible pavement design life. Locally, Highway geometric design code for Iraqi building code has assign certain admissible maximum load limits per every axle truck type that should not be overrun. In this paper nine different axle truck loads (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16) tons, single axle with dual tire and, and two different resilient moduli of asphalt pavement were chosen. The evaluation was carried out assuming high temperature to represent weather conditions in summer season and low temperature to represent weather condition in winter season. KENLAYER program was used to estimate the tensile strains at the bottom of the surface asphalt layer and the compressive strains at the top of the subgrade course. The result presented that estimated pavement design life and the maximum permitted axle load through the summer is 9 tons and 15 tons through winter and by allowing the axle truck load increase from 9 to 13 tons, the pavement lose approximately one quarter compared with its design life at 9 tons. It was concluded that increasing axle loads leads to increasing tensile and compressive strain and increasing resilient modulus of asphalt layer results in decreasing strains. In addition, the rutting and fatigue lives has dramatically decreased with increasing the axle load.
