Investigation of Impact of Moisture Variation on Response of Pavements through Small-Scale Models

The detrimental impact of the intrusion of moisture into base and subgrade layers of pavements is well quantified based on laboratory tests, and is documented in a number of field studies. Due to construction variability and limitations of the instrumentation and test devices, the field trends contain some scatter. A series of well-controlled tests was carried out on small-scale specimens (1 m in diameter) to determine the feasibility of quantifying the impact of moisture on one base and two types of subgrade. To achieve this goal, a test setup was designed and used. To determine how realistic the outcome from these experiments was, the results were compared with those from two full-scale test sections made from the same materials. The results from the small-scale and full-scale tests were also compared with the outcomes of numerical models. The experimental results from the small-scale and full-scale tests were quite similar. The trends from the numerical models were also similar to the experimental results; however, a transfer function was needed to match the two. Based on this study, the small-scale tests can lead to similar outcomes much faster and with enormously less cost in comparison to full-scale field tests.