Development of full-scale laboratory accelerated pavement testing facility: a step toward performance assessment of geosynthetics reinforced pavement

The road network in India is growing at an exponential rate. The biggest challenge in this scenario is an availability of good-quality pavement materials at a reasonable rate. The demands of these pavement materials are increasing at an accelerated rate due to which good-quality material available in nature is getting depleted rapidly. This may create a threat to the environment in the near future. The rate of depletion may be reduced to a certain extent by adopting measures, viz. use of recycled pavement materials, stabilization of locally available poor-quality materials, and use of reinforced pavement. Assessment of such measures in a limited time is the biggest challenge. This challenge may be tackled by using full-scale accelerated pavement testing setup. However, the full-scale accelerated pavement test is not readily available. Over the globe, accelerated pavement testing setups are developed at only a few universities and research institutes. This paper presents the development details of a full-scale laboratory accelerated pavement testing setup. The calibration of the applied axle load is also presented. The developed full-scale laboratory accelerated pavement testing setup will prove opportunity to test new material/technique which will build up the confidence due to gain of knowledge. This paper also aims to investigate the variation of vertical stress and deformation at the base–subgrade interface of geotextile-reinforced and unreinforced pavement using the developed pavement testing facility.