Study on vibratory leaching behavior and damage evolution of cement stabilized macadam (CSM)

Abstract

Leaching is one of the main causes of water damage to the highway base, which can aggravate under the vibrations of the highway load and substantially deteriorate the durability of highway. To investigate the effect of the leaching of cement stabilized macadam (CSM) under vibration condition, a new method was reported in this study accelerate the leaching of CSM in a laboratory by changing the parameters such as vibration frequency, vibration time, leaching medium, etc. The vibration leaching behavior and damage evolution of CSM were studied by comparing the results of the vibration non-leaching test and the vibration leaching test. The main test indexes were calcium ion concentration, pH, leaching depth, ultrasonic wave velocity, unconfined compressive strength, splitting strength and acoustic emission amplitude. The results indicated that vibration could accelerate the leaching efficiency, and the acceleration effect can be changed by changing the vibration frequency. The performance of CSM considerably deteriorated due to leaching. With the increase in the leaching time, the leaching depth increased continuously, and the unconfined compressive strength and splitting strength decreased considerably; moreover, the damage accumulation increased. The durability of CSM was substantially reduced. The effect of the leaching of low-dose CSM is more obvious than that of high-dose CSM.

Keywords

• Cement stabilized macadam
• Leaching
• Vibration acceleration
• Damage evolution