Spatial and temporal changes in small-strain shear modulus of geogrid-stabilized crushed aggregate materials

Abstract

Geogrid stabilization can be used by transportation agencies to build durable roadways over soft subgrade soil. The performance of geogrid stabilization is highly dependent on the properties of the geogrid material, the aggregate material, and the interaction between the two materials when combined. Therefore, transportation agencies need to perform their own studies to assess the performance of geogrid stabilization for their local materials. Additionally, the current knowledge base needs to be continually expanded to a variety of aggregate-geosynthetic composites to develop performance-based design methods for geosynthetic-stabilization. This study evaluates the long-term performance of two geogrids used to stabilize a crushed aggregate material. A full-scale traffic loading system was built to simulate a full half-axle (40kN) traffic load for thousands of load cycles. Two trials were completed using the same crushed aggregate material. For each trial, two geogrid-stabilized sections, and one control section were evaluated. The performance of the test sections was monitored for 4000 load cycles by measuring surface rutting and completing multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) to measure aggregate stiffness. Results showed that the geogrid-stabilized sections had better long-term performance than the control sections with lower degradation of the as-built aggregate stiffness. There was good agreement amongst the MASW results, rutting measurements, and Shakedown analysis. It has been concluded that MASW is an effective method for evaluating the long-term performance of geogrid stabilization in aggregate layers with a customized instrumentation plan according to the targeted measurements.