Evolution of Lateritic Soils Geotechnical Parameters during a Multi-Cyclic OPM Compaction and Correlation with Road Traffic

Meissa FALL, Dethie Sarr, Makhaly Ba, Etienne Berbinau, Jean-Louis Borel, Mapathe Ndiaye, Cheikh H. Kane

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DOI: 10.4236/gm.2011.13010                

Abstract

Gravel lateritic soils are intensively used in road geotechnical engineering. This material is largely representative of engineering soil all around the tropical African Countries [1,2]. Gravel lateritic soils from parts of Burkina Faso and Senegal (West Africa) are used to determine the evolution of the geotechnical parameters from one to ten cycles of modified Proctor compaction. This test procedure is non-common for geotechnical purposes and it was found suitable and finally adopted to describe how these problematic soils behave when submitted to a multi-cyclic set of Modified Proctor compactions (OPM) [3,4]. On another hand, we propose a correlation between the traffic and the cycles of compaction considered as the repeated load. From that, this work shows the generation of active fine particles, the decrease of the CBR index and also the mechanical characteristics (mainly the Young Modulus, E) that contribute at least to the main deformation of the road structure.

Keywords

Optimum Moisture Content (OPM), Multi-Cyclic Compaction, CBR, AASHTO, Fines, Lateritic Soil, Road Structure

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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