Fatigue Characteristics of Cement-Stabilized Granular Lateritic Soils

Abstract

Granular lateritic soils (GLS) are available in many parts of the world as a marginal material, which can be stabilized and used as cemented subbase/base layers in pavements. Fatigue characteristics of any bound road material is very important considering the repeated nature of load application in pavements, but few studies were found on fatigue characterization of cement-treated granular lateritic soils (CLS). Therefore, this study was undertaken to conduct flexural fatigue tests on CLS beam samples using the four-point bending test in a stress-controlled mode. Soil samples were collected from three different sources located in the eastern part of India and stabilized with cement in varying dosage of 3%–10%. Relationships of fatigue life with reference to initial strain and fatigue life with reference to stress ratio were established in this study for CLS samples. It was observed that both stress ratio and strain are important variables in predicting fatigue life. Modulus degradation of stabilized samples with increasing load cycles was noticed, and complete fracture was observed after 15%–25% of the reduction in the modulus for all the specimens. Strain damage exponents were determined for CLS samples under a stress-controlled environment which can be used by other stabilized soils having unconfined compressive strength (UCS) value in the range of 3–6 MPa. Inclusion of modulus was found to have a minor effect on the fatigue life prediction model of studied cemented lateritic soils.