Performance Improvement of Flexible Pavement on Swelling Subgrade Using Geotextile

Abstract

Expansive soils are one of the most problematic materials that are widely encountered in significant land areas in several parts of the world; like Africa, Australia, India, United States and Canada. The South Gujarat region in India have majority of top soil as black cotton soil. The black cotton soil has characteristics of shrinking on drying and heaving on wetting. This soil being expansive creates several types of damages to pavement structures, and in some cases the pavement may even become unserviceable. The normal climate condition of study area shows short wet and long dry period which aggravate the problem of swelling and shrinkage. The IRC: 37 – 2001, Annexure – 4 suggest 0.6 to 1.0 m thick non-cohesive soil cushion on the expansive soil for road construction which led to higher cost for road construction. Also for new urban areas it is difficult to raise the embankment or to excavate the subgrade upto such a depth due to existing structures and under laying service lines. To provide economical solution along with feasible application Geotextile used as reinforcement material for flexible pavement. It is provided below the pavement components to act against the heaving of the swelling soil at the same time it helps as drainage layer also. Field study is undertaken to observe the effect of Geotextile in flexible pavement performance and 2 specific boundary conditions are created for observations. Observations shows about 50 % reduction in shrinkage effect for paved road reinforced with Geotextile subjected to drying and wetting cycles. 