Projects

Background

Sinkholes have caused great damage to road system around the word and is a serious hazard to road users. Pavement failures caused by sinkholes are normally sudden without any warning.  Geogrid reinforced asphalt pavement has been used for road rehabilitation and to improve the fatigue life of asphalt. Geosynthetics have also been used in road and embankment over cavern or sinkholes to minimize the deformation of the structures. Geogrid reinforced asphalt could potentially remediate the risk of sinkhole caused failure by delaying the failure process and providing early signs of localized settlement in asphalt before sudden failure, but the effectiveness has not been studied, neither the failure mechanism of geogrid reinforced asphalt over sinkholes of different sizes.  

Project Objectives

1. Evaluate localized sinkhole induced asphalt pavement failure

2. Assess the reinforcing effect of geogrid reinforced asphalt over localized sinkholes

3. Propose probabilistic based design method for reinforced asphalt pavement to remediate the risk of sinkhole induced pavement failure