28-10-2014, 02:19 PM
Abstracts: The first use of fabrics in reinforcing roads was attempted by the South Carolina Highway Department in 1926. Geosynthetics have been used to reinforce the base layer of flexible pavement systems for the past thirty years. Geosynthetics have become well established construction materials for geotechnical and environmental applications in most parts of the world. Because they constitute manufactured materials, new products and applications are developed on a routine basis to provide solutions to routine and critical problems alike. Results from recent research and from monitoring of instrumented structures throughout the years have led to new design methods for different applications of geosynthetics. Because of the significant breath of geosynthetic applications. Geotextiles and Geogrids are two specific families of Geosynthetics and are discussed in the context of pavement structure design in this Report. Geotextiles materials perform five major functions: separation, reinforcement, filtration, drainage and containment. Geogrids function almost exclusively as reinforcement materials. In pavement structures, geogrids are generally cost competitive against the granular material they replace, either through lower initial cost or through extended service life of the pavement structure.This report examines a means to compare traditional pavement structure designs, absent of geosynthetics, to pavement structure designs incorporating geosynthetics.