LAMES — Testing Equipment

The Fatigue Carousel

The fatigue carousel is a traffic simulator, used to study the full-scale behaviour of road pavements under accelerated heavy traffic. With a diameter of 40 m, its power allows loads of over thirteen tonnes placed at the end of an arm to be driven at up to 100 km/h. Two months of rotation can represent up to 20 years of heavy traffic on a medium-traffic road (T3: 150 HGVs/day), which corresponds to 1 million load applications.

Tests may concern new pavement structures using innovative materials, their maintenance and strengthening techniques, as well as any road element or inspection technique.

By its performance, it is one of the largest installations of this type in the world. The site has three test rings allowing the carousel to be moved from one site to another within a week. Each ring has an average perimeter of 120 m, which can be subdivided into several test sectors dedicated to the same or different subjects.