Evaluation of Subgrade Resilient Modulus and Modulus Ratio for Geotextile Reinforced Water Bound Macadam Road using Full-Scale Laboratory Accelerated Pavement Testing Set Up

Abstract

Resilient modulus (MR) is a very important parameter for designing the flexible pavements. In the mechanistic pavement design, MR of pavement materials is used as an input parameter. In most of the studies, the MR values are usually obtained by conducting laboratory repeated load triaxial test. However, due to the complexity, cost, and need for well-trained personnel associated with it; the researchers have tried to find out several alternative tests. This paper aims to investigate the resilient modulus of subgrade soil for the full-scale geotextile reinforced and unreinforced pavement by using the indigenously developed full-scale laboratory accelerated pavement testing set up. The MR of unreinforced pavement section was verified by comparing it with the laboratory repeated load triaxial test and found to be comparable. The paper also aims to investigate the variation in modulus ratio for geotextile reinforced and unreinforced pavement sections. The modulus ratio and resilient modulus of unreinforced pavement were compared with the empirical equation suggested by Indian Road Congress (IRC) 37-2012 and provided reasonably good agreement. It can be concluded that the full-scale accelerated pavement testing set up has provided an alternative to repeated load triaxial test for the determination of resilient modulus.

Keywords

• resilient modulus (mr)
• accelerated pavement testing set up
• modulus ratio
• reinforced pavement