Performance evaluation of geosynthetic reinforced marginal material as base layer over weak subgrade

ABSTRACT

The availability of quality materials for construction has been an issue in some regions. This scarcity obliged using marginal materials reinforced with geosynthetic materials as one of the quests for sustainability in the pavement industry. In this study, an attempt was made to stabilize the marginal materials by incorporating geosynthetics. The different geosynthetics used in the study are geogrid, geocell, double geogrid, and geocell + geogrid. A series of unreinforced (UR) and geosynthetic reinforced (GR) pavement prototypes were constructed in the laboratory with landslide debris as base material underlain by black cotton soil subgrade. Large-scale cyclic plate load (CPL) tests were performed on test prototypes constructed in the laboratory under cyclic loading following the trapezoidal loading pattern with 0.77 Hz frequency. The efficacy of geosynthetic reinforcement was quantified concerning permanent deformation (PD), resilient deformation (RD), Rut depth reduction (RDR), Traffic improvement ratio (TIR), and reduction in vertical stresses transmitted to the subgrade and reduction in base layer thickness. The test results indicate that the GR significantly reduced the rut depth and improved the traffic capacity. In addition, over all types of GRs, the combination of geogrid and geocell outperformed in terms of permanent deformation and rut depth reduction.

KEYWORDS:

• Geosynthetic reinforcement
• cyclic plate load
• permanent deformation
• resilient deformation
• rut depth reduction
• traffic improvement ratio

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Director, CSIR-CRRI, New Delhi for his kind permission to publish this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: B. Gottumukkala and P. S. Prasad; data collection: B. Gottumukkala and P. S. Prasad; analysis and interpretation of results: M. Divakar, S. T. Swarna and B. Gottumukkala; draft manuscript preparation: M. Divakar and S. T. Swarna; manuscript revision: S. T. Swarna, G. Arunkumar and B. Gottumukkala. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

Data associated can be made available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

National Mission on Himalayan Studies (NMHS) is greatly acknowledged for financial assistance under fellowship Grant Number NMHS/2017-18/MG45/45 to the project.