Over the last decade a considerable amount of research effort has been focussed on the development of a repeated load triaxial (RLT) test procedure to assist practitioners in the use of natural and marginal unbound base/subbase materials in road pavements. A significant hindrance to the widespread adoption of the RLT test has been the lack of data linking the results of the laboratory test to field performance. In order to address this issue, a major Australian research project was undertaken to compare the deformation of four granular bases under accelerated loading with various laboratory performance tests, including wheel tracking and RLT. This paper details the findings in terms of the usefulness of various laboratory tests to rank the deformation of granular bases under thin bituminous surfacings. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E220164.
Abstract