Increasing the stability of road pavements during their operation is an important task for all participants in the construction of this complex engineering structure. One of the failure modes for flexible pavements is rutting. Rutting can occur both due to insufficient shear stability of the top layer and the entire road as a whole. As studies by domestic and foreign scientists show, the process of rutting is greatly influenced by the shear stability of the road surface material. Failure occurs when the external load reaches or exceeds the shear strength of the material. At the same time, residual deformations begin to develop and accumulate in the upper layer of the road surface. Accumulating over time, they form a rut in the runup zone of the upper layer.An analysis of the interaction process between the wheels of a moving vehicle and the road surface shows that the forces from it act on the road surface in different planes, and not just parallel to the longitudinal axis of the road. But, during the process of compacting the layer of asphalt concrete mixture by rolling, there were no forces from the rollers acting in the transverse direction of the road. Therefore, the wear layer resists external forces acting in the transverse direction of the road less effectively than along the longitudinal axis of the road. This is one of the main factors in obtaining a road surface with a non-uniform structure in the directions – along and across the road axis.As a result, the existing technology for compacting a layer of hot asphalt concrete mixture by rolling road rollers a priori provides for the production of a heterogeneous asphalt concrete coating that is not capable of equally resisting external, especially shear, loads in different directions.Improving compaction technology can help reduce the heterogeneity of the structure of the top layer.

rutting, compaction technology, heterogeneity, shear stability, road surface.