Characterisation of deformation behaviour unbound granular materials using advanced repeated load triaxial testing

Student

• Negin Zhalehjoo

Supervisors

• Dr Ali Tolooiyan
• Professor Rae Mackay

Industrial Partner

• Australian Road Research Board (ARRB Group)

Project (PhD)

Currently, pavement design process in Australia assumes a linear elastic model or sub-layering rules for the unbound granular materials (base/sub-base layers) and fine-grained soils (subgrade layer). This method disregards the nonlinear stress dependency of the materials resilient modulus under repeated transient traffic loads. Nonlinear analysis tends to predict more accurate prediction of the pavement responses, such as stresses, strains, and displacements in the critical components compared to the linear analysis. The objective of this research is to replace the existing linear elastic model with a nonlinear stress-dependent resilient modulus model for the pavement materials to predict the realistic performance of Australian roads pavement and minimise the risk of excessive permanent deformation.