Experimental Study on Steel-Wire-Mesh Reinforced Flexible Pavements

Use of reinforcement in flexible pavements is gaining its popularity worldwide. Many studies are available in the literature on performance improvement of pavements using high-strength geogrid reinforcement. Various other types of reinforcements have made their way in the market. One such reinforcement type is hexagonal shaped steel-wire-mesh reinforcement with double twisted wires that has shown promising results in resisting rutting and fatigue cracking of flexible pavements. In this study, unpaved pavement structure overlying medium-stiff subgrades is considered. Large-size test chamber of dimensions equal to 1m x 1m x 1m is used to assess the performance of pavement structure under static loading. The load is applied through a 150 mm-diameter plate using a hydraulic actuator. The subgrade soil with a relative density equal to 70% is prepared by controlling the compacted density. A total of five test sections are considered- (a) unreinforced control section, (b) three geogrid-reinforced sections with different d_r/B ratios (equal to 0.3, 0.45, and 0.6), where d_r is the depth of reinforcement and B is the diameter of loading plate, and (c) one steel-wire-mesh reinforced section with reinforcement placed at optimum reinforcement depth ratio, d_r/B. Load improvement factors are proposed to quantify the improvement in the behaviour of reinforced pavement structure over unreinforced pavement structure.