The Effect of Moisture Content on the Segregation of Pavement Materials

Segregation in granular materials may lead to the undesired performance of the pavement material and subsequently may cause serious damage of roads. The Segregation phenomenon is easily encountered in non-cohesive granular soils with broad particle size distributions or mixtures of materials wherein components exhibit differences in physical properties. The segregation propensity of base/sub-ballast materials is mainly related to the disparity in particles size which results to different tendency for sliding and rolling motion. Factors such as grain shape, grain size, mixture gradation, moisture content greatly influence the segregation potential. This paper reports preliminary results of a testing program for studying the effect of moisture content on the segregation vulnerability of granular soils implemented in pavement construction. To this aim, an experimental setup is designed and the effect of moisture content on the segregation potential is investigated

Keywords:

Segregation , Pavement materials , Experimental setup , Quantifying segregation