Abstract

Road-bases are quarry materials, which are used in the construction of road pavements. They comprised a combination of coarse and fine crushed materials, which when placed and compacted at the correct moisture, form a stiff layer. For soil aggregates materials to be used correctly in road construction, it is necessary to know their properties. In addition, road-base material characterizations are needed to design an adequate pavement structure for expected traffics load. This study aims to evaluate the effects of the physical, chemical and mechanical behaviors of soil aggregate as granular road base materials in order to provide rudimentary understanding of roads based materials on mechanistic-empirical pavement design and analysis using experimental laboratory tests. These tests were performed in accordance with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and British Standards (BS) on fine and coarse soil aggregates along with base aggregate used in pavements. The results show that the optimum moisture content, maximum dry density and plasticity index have significant influence on the behavior of these materials.

Keywords:

Maximum dry density, optimum moisture content, pavements, plasticity index, road-bases, soil aggregates,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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