Installation of geosynthetics on flexible pavements with CBUQ: Installation
damage.
Installation Damage; Flexible Pavements; Geosynthetics; Uniaxial
Tensile Tests.
An essential means for locomotion of people and cargoes throughout
the territory, the road transport gains an important role in the social and economic field.
However, the low investment in infrastructure causes it to develop pathologies that need
to be inspected, as well as the mechanisms that originated them, so the proper
restoration or prevention alternatives can be chosen. Aiming to extend the service life of
the pavement and to provide for users efficient trafficability conditions that meet
comfort, economy and safety requirements, technologies have been developed and the
use of reinforcement in road construction can be highlighted. Geosynthetics has
increasingly been used in pavements due to reduction of time execution, costs and even
environmental impacts. Nevertheless, if improperly handled or subjected to external
agents, polymeric materials may exhibit unsatisfactory performance during its service
life. Accordingly, this research was developed in an urban area of Natal, Rio Grande do
Norte, in order to investigate the thermal and mechanical damages in geosynthetics in a
pavement construction and compare the results obtained with the available literature
data, since most of the studies are performed in laboratories. Therefore, samples with
different types of geosynthetics were exposed to high temperature of the CBUQ and to
compaction activity and then exhumed and tested by means of uniaxial tensile tests.
Thereby, tensile strength, strain, coefficient of variation, secant tensile modulus and
reduction factor were evaluated and compared before and after the damage. The results
showed that subjecting geosynthetics to damages as those occurring in a pavement
construction, in general, a decrease in tensile strength and strain is observed. Moreover,
some reduction factors expressed higher values than those available in the literature.