Strength and fatigue performance for cement-treated aggregate base materials

ABSTRACT

In order to reveal the characteristics of strength and fatigue damage of cement-treated aggregate base materials and improve the accuracy of semi-rigid base asphalt pavement design, the unconfined compressive strength tests, flexural strength tests were conducted under the curing periods of 3, 7, 14, 28, 60 and 90 days. The flexural strength tests of different loading rates were employed under the curing period of 90 days. A power function was applied to the pattern of variation of strength with curing periods and loading rates. The mechanism of the effect of curing periods and loading rate on flexural strength was revealed. The relationship between unconfined compressive strength (a construction quality control index in Chinese Standards) and flexural strength (a structural design parameter in Chinese Standards) was performed. To this end, the construction quality index and structural design parameter were unified. In addition, the flexural fatigue equation and fatigue damage model under different curing periods were also established in this study. The results showed that the curing periods have a significant influence on the strength and fatigue performance for cement-treated aggregate base materials. The theoretical basis of durable semi-rigid asphalt pavement design was provided by this research.

KEYWORDS:

• Road engineering
• cement-treated aggregate base materials
• curing periods
• strength
• fatigue damage

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the reviewers, editors for their advice on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51578081, 51608058), Hunan Province-Transport Construction Projects of Science and Technology (201701), The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Transportation and Transportation Department Transportation Projects of Science and Technology (NJ-2016-35, HMJSKJ-201801), Scientific and Technological Innovation Project of Hunan Province for University Graduate Students and Key Projects of Hunan Province-Technological Innovation Project in Industry.