Asphalt pavement rutting is one of the most commonly observed forms of pavement distresses and is a major safety concern to transportation agencies in Thailand. Research into improvements of conventional hot-mix asphalt materials, mix designs and methods of reinforced pavement structural layers, can provide extended pavement life and significant cost savings in pavement maintenance and repair. This paper reports the full-scale testing programme that was carried out at Highway No.11, (Uttaradit Province, Thailand) to evaluate the performance of Geosynthetic-reinforced materials in a conventional flexible pavement. Three test sections consisting of Geosynthetic-reinforced pavements and one unreinforced control test section were constructed in this project. The test sections were subjected to the static load test under truck weights of 20, 30, and 40 tons. Permanent surface deformations and pavement vertical stress had been continuously measured under a pre-specified test truck at 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 months after the construction. Field test data was used to validate a numerical model developed at the University of Sheffield. It is found that numerical results show a good agreement with the field data. The result of the present study also reveals that the Geosynthetic-reinforced pavement significantly improved the performance relative to the unreinforced control pavements. The result of this research is a practical framework for developing extensive full-scale testing data which can be used to validate numerical modeling and develops a design recommendation for the use of advanced Geosynthetics for flexible pavements.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)