Onsite Use of Recycled Asphalt Pavement Materials and Geocells to ...

Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations
The experimental work was carried out on unreinforced and geocell-reinforced flexible
pavements with recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) bases under cyclic loading in the large
geotechnical testing box at the University of Kansas. These tests simulated onsite use of RAP
with geocell as bases overlaid by thin hot mix asphalt (HMA) surfaces to support heavy trucks.
Six experiments were carried out by varying the thickness of the base course with and without
geocell confinement.
5.1 Conclusions
Based on the test results, the following conclusions can be drawn:
1. The vane shear test, dynamic cone penetration test, and light weight deflectometer test
were effective methods for quality control for subgrade, base course, and hot mix asphalt
(HMA) surface during the preparation of test sections.
2. The novel polymeric alloy (NPA) geocell reinforcement significantly reduced the
permanent deformation of the flexible pavement and increased the pavement life by a
factor of 10.
3. The thinner geocell-reinforced base section had equivalent performance to the thicker
unreinforced base section. In this study, the 15 cm thick geocell-reinforced RAP base
was equivalent to the 30 cm thick unreinforced RAP base.
4. The geocell confinement increased the stiffness of the base course and reduced the
compression of the base course.
5. The geocell-reinforced RAP bases provided a solid foundation for better compaction of
the HMA surface and resulted in lower percent of air void in the HMA surface.
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