ABSTRACT
A highway road section was built from 2004 to 2006 in the southern part of Norway. Soon after the opening significant damage in form of alligator cracking and rutting occurred. The aim of the research described in this paper is to characterize the behaviour of the pavement unbound layers that may have possibly caused the issue. At a first stage, a collaboration among different partners carried out field surveys and samplings in five locations with and without visible surface damage.
At a second stage, laboratory analyses investigated the properties of the base layer and especially focused on repeated triaxial load testing. The specimens were analysed with varying moisture content and degree of compaction. These laboratory tests gave significantly lower stiffness and resistance to permanent deformation for the damaged sections; this could partly explain why distresses are more evident just on some parts of the road.
