Main Cause of Deterioration in Wet–Dry Test Method on Base Course Material

Abstract

The wet–dry cycles test examines the durability of stabilized soils. The deterioration process in this test can be attributed to multiple factors, so this attempt aims to explore the most important one. Uniaxial compression strength, shrinkage, and wet–dry cycles test results were applied in coupled and transient thermo-hydro-mechanical analyses to simulate one cycle of the test. It is found that moisture diffusion generates high stresses in the surface which indicates shrinkage as the dominant degrading factor.