Experimental Investigation on Repair and Maintenance of Flexible Pavement Using Geo-Synthetics

Abstract

Flexible pavements are frequently damaged with excessive cracks, settlements, and potholes due to various reasons. There are many options to maintain and repair such defects depending upon serviceability standard, funds available, and priorities for maintenance operations. Since last few decades geo-synthetic materials are introduced in market for wide range of geotechnical applications such as reinforcement, separator, drainage, gabions, etc. In this study, an attempt is made to study the effectiveness of non-woven geotextile for repair of potholes. For this, geotextile was used over a patch of the potholes to act as reinforcement and drainage overlaid by the aggregates. To check the effectiveness of the geotextile performance, cyclic plate load test was carried out in the laboratory model of 0.8 m × 0.8 m × 0.8 m tank to measure settlement. The same set of the test was also conducted by simulating potholes and repaired without geotextile layer, and then the comparison of the settlement was done to check the performance of the geotextiles. It was found that pavement with geotextile produces 45% less settlement than pavement without geotextile.