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In June 1994, a 150-m-long secondary road pavement section was built as part of the realignment of route 616 and 757 in Bedford County, Virginia to evaluate the performance of geosynthetically stabilized flexible pavements. The California Bearing Ratio (CBR) of the subgrade after construction was approximately 8%. The pavement section is was divided into nine individual sections, each approximately 15 m long. Sections one through three have a 100-mm-thick limestone base course (VDOT 21-B), sections four through six have a 150-mm-thick base course, and sections seven through nine have a 200-mm-thick base course. Three sections were stabilized with geotextiles and three with geogrids at the base course-subgrade interface. The remaining three sections were kept as control sections. One of each stabilization category was included in each base course thickness group. The hot-mix asphalt (HMA), SM-2A, wearing surface thickness was 78-90 mm. The outside wheel path of the inner lane was instrumented with strain gages, pressure cells, piezoelectric sensors, thermocouples, and moisture sensors. Section performances based on the instrumentation response to control and normal vehicular loading indicated that geosynthetic stabilization provided significant improvement in pavement performance. Generally, the measured pressure at the base course-subgrade interface for the geotextile-stabilized sections was lower than the geogrid-stabilized and control sections, within a specific base course thickness group. This finding agreed with other measurements, such as rut depth, ground penetration radar survey, and falling weight deflectometer survey. The control section (100-mm-thick base course) exhibited rutting that was more severe than the geosynthetically stabilized sections. Falling weight deflectometer back-calculation revealed consistently weaker subgrade strength for the geogrid-stabilized and control sections than for the geotextile-stabilized sections over the three year evaluation period. To quantitatively assess the extent of contamination, excavation of the first three sections in October 1997 revealed that fines present in the base course were significantly greater in the control and geogrid-stabilized section than in the geotextile-stabilized section. These findings led to the conclusion that the subgrade fine movement into the base layer when a separator is absent jeopardizes its strength. Further analysis of the field data showed that geotextile-stabilization may increase the service life of flexible secondary road pavements by 1.5 to 2 times. Finally, a new mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement design method for pavements with and without geosynthetics has been developed. Elasto-viscoelastic material characterization is used to characterize the HMA layer. The field results from Bedford County, Virginia project have been used to calibrate and validate the final developed design procedure. The concept of transition layer formed at the interface of base course and subgrade is also incorporated into the design approach. Powerful axisymmetric linear elastic analysis is used to solve the system of equations for mechanical and thermal loading on the pavement structure. Elasto-viscoelastic correspondence principle (EVCP) and Boltzman superposition integral (BSI) are used to convert the elastic solution to its viscoelastic counterpart and also to introduce the dynamic nature of vehicular loading. Pseudo-elastoplasticity is introduced into the problem by determining the extent of plastic strain using laboratory experimentation results and estimating the failure mechanisms, based on accumulated strains as opposed to the total strain (recoverable and non-recoverable). The pavement design approach presented in this dissertation is a hybrid of already existing techniques, as well as new techniques developed to address the visco-plastic nature of HMA. / Ph. D.

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abstract: Deterministic solutions are available to estimate the resilient modulus of unbound materials, which are difficult to interpret because they do not incorporate the variability associated with the inherent soil heterogeneity and that associated with environmental conditions. This thesis presents the stochastic evaluation of the Enhanced Integrated Climatic Model (EICM), which is a model used in the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide to estimate the soil long-term equilibrium resilient modulus. The stochastic evaluation is accomplished by taking the deterministic equations in the EICM and applying stochastic procedures to obtain a mean and variance associated with the final design parameter, the resilient modulus at equilibrium condition. In addition to the stochastic evaluation, different statistical analyses were applied to determine that the uses of hierarchical levels are valid in the unbound pavement material design and the climatic region has an impact on the final design resilient moduli at equilibrium. After determining that the climatic regions and the hierarchical levels are valid, reliability was applied to the resilient moduli at equilibrium. Finally, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) design concept based on the Structural Number (SN) was applied in order to illustrate the true implications the hierarchical levels of design and the variability associated with environmental effects and soil properties have in the design of pavement structures. The stochastic solutions developed as part of this thesis work together with the SN design concept were applied to five soils with different resilient moduli at optimum compaction condition in order to evaluate the variability associated with the resilient moduli at equilibrium condition. These soils were evaluated in five different climatic regions ranging from arid to extremely wet conditions. The analysis showed that by using the most accurate input parameters obtained from laboratory testing (hierarchical Level 1) instead of Level 3 analysis could potentially save the State Department of Transportation up to 10.12 inches of asphalt in arid and semi-arid regions. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering 2011

Since World War II, the military has sought methods for rapid stabilization of weak soils for support of its missions worldwide. Over the past 60 years, cement and lime have consistently been found to be among the most effective stabilizers for road and airfield applications, although recent developments show promise using nontraditional stabilizers. The purpose of this research is to determine the most effective stabilizers and dosage rates of stabilizers to increase the strength of soft clay soils (initial CBR = 2) within 72 hours for contingency airfields to support C-17 and C-130 aircraft traffic. Pavement design charts for various aircraft loading conditions were generated using the Pavement-Transportation Computer Assisted Structural Engineering Program, which was developed by the Engineering Research and Development Center to determine ranges of required strength and thickness for an underlying subbase layer and a top base layer, such as stabilized soil, crushed-aggregate, or aluminum matting. From laboratory studies, the required design strengths for many loading conditions were achieved by treating clay with 2%-4% pelletized quicklime for the underlying subbase layer, and treating clay with 2%-4% pelletized quicklime, 1% RSC15 fibers, and 11% Type III cement for the top base layer. While the base layer requires a minimum thickness of six inches, the required subbase layer thickness is often quite large and may be difficult to construct. However, newly developed construction equipment currently used for subgrade stabilization on civilian projects should be able to stabilize the soil down to these large required depths and make construction possible. / Master of Science

The Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) developed by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project 1-37A, is a very powerful tool for the design and analysis of pavements. The designer utilizes an iterative process to select design parameters and predict performance, if the performance is not acceptable they must change design parameters until an acceptable design is achieved. The design process has more than 100 input parameters across many areas, including, climatic conditions, material properties for each layer of the pavement, and information about the truck traffic anticipated. Many of these parameters are known to have insignificant influence on the predicted performance During the development of this procedure, input parameter sensitivity analysis varied a single input parameter while holding other parameters constant, which does not allow for the interaction between specific variables across the entire parameter space. A portion of this research identified a methodology of global sensitivity analysis of the procedure using random sampling techniques across the entire input parameter space. This analysis was used to select the most influential input parameters which could be used in a streamlined design process. This streamlined method has been developed using Multiple Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) to develop predictive models derived from a series of actual pavement design solutions from the design software provided by NCHRP. Two different model structures have been developed, one being a series of models which predict pavement distress (rutting, fatigue cracking, faulting and IRI), the second being a forward solution to predict a pavement thickness given a desired level of distress. These thickness prediction models could be developed for any subset of MEPDG solutions desired, such as typical designs within a given state or climatic zone. These solutions could then be modeled with the MARS process to produce am “Efficient Design Solution” of pavement thickness and performance predictions. The procedure developed has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of pavement designers by allowing them to look at many different design scenarios prior to selecting a design for final analysis.

No description available.

Asphalt’s fatigue and modulus characteristics play an important role in pavement design. Ultimately they govern the required thickness of asphalt to structurally support heavy vehicles. The thickness of the asphalt layer is a major contributor to the cost of construction. In New Zealand, the design of structural asphalt layers has been a problem for some time and gives rise to two areas of concern. First, the present fatigue failure criterion, the Shell fatigue transfer function, which has been adopted from overseas, not only underestimates the fatigue life of the country’s asphalts, but does not accurately characterise the fatigue behaviour of our local asphalt mixes. Consequently, asphalt thicknesses are overdesigned. Second, asphalt’s fatigue behaviour is influenced by numerous factors and therefore can be difficult to characterise. The primary objective of this thesis is to develop fatigue and modulus models, by carrying out fatigue and modulus tests, to characterise the behaviour of two typical New Zealand structural asphalts. Both resilient and stiffness moduli tests were performed at a range of temperatures and loading rates developing moduli master curves, which predict the asphalt’s modulus for any pavement temperature and vehicle speed. A general full factorial experiment was carried out utilising the four-point flexural beam fatigue test. Tests were carried out at different strain levels, temperatures, and loading rates. An analysis of variance showed that the impacts of strain amplitude, temperature, binder type, the interaction of strain amplitude and temperature, and the interaction of strain amplitude and binder type have a significant effect on fatigue behaviour. The developed models, which account for temperature effects give the pavement engineer the ability to undergo a more accurate assessment of fatigue damage than at present for different climatic temperatures demonstrated by using an incremental damage analysis approach. The research shows that with such characterisation for the given pavement’s design life, thinner and less expensive roads can be constructed in New Zealand.

Work done by several researchers reveals that unbound aggregate materials show nonlinear cross-anisotropic behavior. The incorporation of cross-anisotropic properties significantly improves the predictions of stress distribution by reducing tensile stresses computed within granular layers. Existing pavement analysis and design approaches, however, generally assume the pavement structure to be linear isotropic layered system. This assumption is motivated by the difficulties in determining cross-anisotropic resilient material properties from laboratory experiments and lack of pavement anisotropic analysis programs. Recently, the International Center for Aggregates Research (ICAR) developed a methodology to characterize unbound aggregate layers by considering stress-sensitivity and nonlinear cross-anisotropy. The ICAR model requires nine coefficients to account for stress-sensitivity and anisotropy of vertical, horizontal, and shear moduli. Unfortunately, ICAR testing protocol is time-consuming and expensive to perform and certainly do not lend themselves to routine testing. Since it is important to be able to consider the stress-sensitive and anisotropic nature of unbound granular materials, a simple procedure was proposed by accounting for the effects of aggregate gradation and shape properties in predicting the cross-anisotropic modular ratio of unbound granular materials. Variable confining pressure type repeated load triaxial tests were performed on six aggregate sources with three different gradations and three different moisture contents. The experimental results were analyzed within the framework of nonlinear cross-anisotropic elastic model in order to determine the model coefficients. Image analysis techniques were utilized to measure aggregate shape properties. The gradation and shape properties were fitted using a cumulative distribution function and nonlinear regression analysis, which is capable of capturing the complete distribution of these properties. The experimental and analytical results indicate that the vertical resilient modulus is greater than the horizontal resilient modulus and that aggregate physical properties significantly affect the anisotropic resilient behavior. Based on finite element analysis, the anisotropic resilient behavior has substantial effect on the critical pavement responses. Thus, it is extremely valuable to approximate the degree of cross-anisotropy in unbound aggregates and to use it as input in the pavement analysis programs to adequately model unbound aggregate bases for pavement design and analysis.

No description available.