Preliminary In-Situ Evaluation of an Innovative, Semi-Flexible Pavement Wearing Course Mixture Using Fast Falling Weight Deflectometer

• Main Authors: Chiara Pratelli, Giacomo Betti, Tullio Giuffrè, Alessandro Marradi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-04-01
• Series: Materials
• Subjects: Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT); Fast Falling Weight Deflectometer (FFWD); semi-flexible pavement; Grouted Macadam; field-testing
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/11/4/611

In the last forty, years semi-flexible pavements have been successfully employed, especially in those areas subjected to heavy and slow-moving loads. They usually comprise a wearing course of Grouted Macadam, a composite pavement material that provides significant advantages in comparison to both concrete and asphalt pavements. On the other hand, the laying process of this material is a two-stage operation, and the realization complexity leads to long realization times and high initial costs. Therefore, the use of semi-flexible pavements has been limited to some fields of application and areas. Recently, an innovative material has been developed to be used as an alternative to Grouted Macadam for semi-flexible pavement wearing course realization. This material should provide similar or even superior characteristics compared to traditional Grouted Macadam. This will reduce semi-flexible pavement construction time and avoid the need for dividing the laying process. This paper presents an experimental program involving the use of FastFWD, as an APT device, to evaluate in-situ properties and performance of this material. The achieved results regarding the validation of this new material by means of FastFWD appear promising both in terms of the material’s properties and resistance to dynamic load repetitions.