ABSTRACT

Continuous compaction control (CCC) involves the measurement of soil properties based on drum vibration characteristics together with the documentation of roller position (initially via wheel encoders and now via GPS). First generation measurement indices such as the compaction meter value (Forssblad 1980) are phenomenological and empirically related to increases in soil density and stiffness. More recently, measurement indices provide an assessment of soil stiffness, particularly on fully compacted soils in a proof roll – type capacity (e.g., Kröber et al. 2001, Anderegg & Kaufmann 2004, Adam & Kopf 2004, Mooney & Rinehart 2007). There is potential for these stiffness measures to be related to design parameters in mechanistic-empirical (M-E) pavement design, e.g., layered moduli, resilient modulus. There would be a considerable benefit if roller measured stiffness parameters were strongly tied to soil properties used in M-E design and performance prediction. To date, however, the meaning behind soil stiffness values measured by CCC rollers is not thoroughly understood.