Influence of Combined Load on the Performance of Geosynthetics as Antireflective Cracking System in Semirigid Base Asphalt Pavements

Abstract

Laboratory fatigue tests were conducted to investigate the antireflective cracking performance of geosynthetics under different combinations of traffic load and temperature variation (thermal load). Four ratios of traffic load to thermal load were selected and the performance of a geotextile and a glass fiber geogrid were evaluated during the tests. Results indicate that the crack growth rate in asphalt pavements significantly increases as the thermal load increases. However, placing the geotextile or glass fiber geogrid can both retard the fatigue of specimens and the propagation of the crack. Also, the glass fiber geogrid can reduce the crack opening better than geotextile for all the evaluate cases, while the geotextile can reduce the fluctuation of crack opening better than glass fiber geogrid under large temperature variation. Moreover, the antireflective cracking performance of glass fiber geogrid rises as the traffic load increases, while the influence of geotextile on crack retardation is more obvious as the thermal load increases.