Over 700 000 km of low traffic volume roads service the rural economies and communities in Australia. Most of these are two-lane two-way unsealed roads needing regular re-gravelling. Wide use is made of locally available road base materials for cost reasons but finding suitable and readily available sources is becoming more difficult every year. Often, these materials are of lesser quality than would be preferred but have been demonstrated to be adequate under the local conditions. Experience has shown that in many cases practitioners rely on this local experience of the use of a material to assess suitability of new road base sources because of the difficulty and cost of conducting full engineering testing and evaluation of such sources. Funding was provided by the Australian Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government to develop a Road Base Test Kit to provide a low cost, easy to use but formal and objective assessment to improve local evaluations of source materials. Potential uses for the kit were established and the test procedures needed were identified. This allowed the selection of practical and affordable testing equipment for the parameters commonly specified for road base. (a).
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