Accelerated Pavement Testing on Thin Asphalt Pavements with Various Base and Subbase Layers

Six thin asphalt pavements were tested under accelerated pavement testing. Those pavements generally varied in the base and subbase materials, but had the same layer thicknesses. Pressure cells and Multi-Depth Deflectometers were used to monitor the vertical stresses and plastic deformations developed inside the pavement structures. Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) tests were performed during the accelerated loading. Test results indicated that a test section with a furnace slag stabilized Blended Calcium Sulfate (or BCS, an industry waste material) base performed significantly better than its counterpart section with a fly-ash stabilized BCS base, whereas both BCS sections appeared to out-perform the pavement sections with the foamed-asphalt stabilized bases and the crush limestone bases. In addition, a cement-treated soil subbase was found to have a better load carrying capacity than a lime-treated subbase. Further investigation illustrates that both the FWD data and instrumentation results could reveal the structural deterioration fairly well.