ABSTRACT
The construction and maintenance of road infrastructure with a view to sustainable development must nowadays integrate the problems of a future scarcity of raw materials such as petroleum products. Glass fiber grids are an efficient and economical solution for reinforcing asphalt pavements in order to increase their service life and reduce crack propagation. In this context, the French National Research Agency-funded SolDuGri project aims to develop more rational and more mechanical approaches for the evaluation of grids, and for the design of reinforced pavements. An accelerated full-scale test (APT) of experimental pavement structures without and with reinforcement using glass fiber grids was carried out on the fatigue carrousel at Nantes Campus of Gustave Eiffel University. During the test, the mechanical behavior of the pavements was monitored using sensors installed in the pavement layers and surface measurements. This paper focuses on analyzing the influence of interface bonding condition between the asphalt layers on the pavements behavior in non-damaged condition. Horizontal strains measured at the bottom of the asphalt layers and surface deflections showed clearly that the reinforced pavement has lower interface bond level than the reference section. Moreover, inverse analysis using FWD measurements and a horizontal shear stiffness parameter allows quantifying field conditions of the asphalt layer interface bonding in both unreinforced and reinforced structures. Associated laboratory interface bonding tests made on specimens extracted from the full-scale pavements and fabricated in laboratory attest the aforementioned impact of the presence of glass fiber grids.
