The availability of quality materials for construction has been an issue in some regions. This scarcity obliged using marginal materials reinforced with geosynthetic materials as one of the quests for sustainability in the pavement industry. In this study, an attempt was made to stabilize the marginal materials by incorporating geosynthetics. The different geosynthetics used in the study are geogrid, geocell, double geogrid, and geocell + geogrid. A series of unreinforced (UR) and geosynthetic reinforced (GR) pavement prototypes were constructed in the laboratory with landslide debris as base material underlain by black cotton soil subgrade. Large-scale cyclic plate load (CPL) tests were performed on test prototypes constructed in the laboratory under cyclic loading following the trapezoidal loading pattern with 0.77 Hz frequency. The efficacy of geosynthetic reinforcement was quantified concerning permanent deformation (PD), resilient deformation (RD), Rut depth reduction (RDR), Traffic improvement ratio (TIR), and reduction in vertical stresses transmitted to the subgrade and reduction in base layer thickness. The test results indicate that the GR significantly reduced the rut depth and improved the traffic capacity. In addition, over all types of GRs, the combination of geogrid and geocell outperformed in terms of permanent deformation and rut depth reduction.
The availability of quality materials for the construction of pavements has been a problem in some regions. This scarcity enforced geosynthetic materials as one of the quests for su1stainability in the pavement industry. This study attempted to stabilize marginal (tunnel muck, reclaimed asphalt pavement material) and industrial waste (zinc slag) materials by employing high density polyethylene geocell to appraise the effectiveness of geosynthetic reinforcement in enhancing the characteristics of pavement materials and mitigating their rutting. The cyclic plate load tests are performed on marginal and industrial waste material with geocellreinforced and unreinforced base layers over black cotton soil as the subgrade. The tests were conducted following the trapezoidal loading pattern with a 0.77-Hz frequency. The geocellreinforced pavement performance was evaluated for resilient deformation, accumulated permanent deformation, rut depth reduction, traffic benefit ratio, and base layer thickness reduction. The mechanistic empirical pavement design guide (MEPDG) permanent deformation performance (PDP) model framework was used to predict the accumulated permanent deformation in unbound granular layers and to differentiate the rutting performance in geocellreinforced and unreinforced sections. This study determined the material constants of the MEPDG PDP model for marginal and industrial waste materials used in the pavement for quantifying the reduction in base layer thickness.