United States Department of Transportation
i
Inverted base pavements : new field test and design catalogue.
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2014-01-01
[PDF-1.71 MB]
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Abstract:The current economic situation has severely affected the US road infrastructure and funding has become
inadequate for either maintenance or future growth.
The inverted base pavement structure is a promising alternative to achieve high quality roads at considerably
lower cost than conventional pavements. The proximity of the unbound granular base layer to the tire load
makes the response of the granular base critical to the performance of the pavement structure. Therefore
extensive material characterization is conducted on the granular materials that make the base. In particular, a
true triaxial chamber is developed to study the mechanical response and the stress-dependent stiffness of
granular bases.
A novel method is developed to assess the as-built stress-dependent anisotropic stiffness of granular bases insitu
using both crosshole and uphole test configurations. The two inverted base pavements built in Georgia at
the Morgan County quarry haul road and the Lagrange south Loop are tested as part of this study.
A nonlinear orthotropic constitutive model is selected to capture the deformational behavior of compacted
granular bases. The response of the pavement is analyzed by implementing this constitutive behavior in a
three-dimensional finite-element model. Different pavement structures are simulated. It is shown that thin
asphalt concrete layers resting directly on granular bases deform as membranes.
Finally, numerical simulations are extended to compare inverted base pavements to conventional pavements
used in practice. Results highlight the inadequacy of ASSHTO’s structural layer coefficient for the analysis of
inverted base pavement structures as well as the potential economic advantages of inverted base pavements
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