Material Characterizations with Seismic Technology

摘要

Mechanistic design procedure specified in the proposed NCHRP (National Cooperative Highway Research Program) 1-37A Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide requires measurements of resilient modulus, stiffness, strength of pavement materials as parts of the design inputs. Currently, the tests specified to measure all these properties defined by AASHTO are time and labor intensive. Moreover, they require very expensive testing equipment and highly trained operators. The need for reliable, fast, cost-effective and nondestructive evaluation of pavement material properties becomes ever more important. Seismic techniques are used to test all these properties, which is based on generation of elastic waves and measurement of their propagation velocity and various wave propagation properties. The techniques have been successfully used in characterization of sites and pavements by the spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) method, evaluation of pavements with seismic pavement analyzer (SPA) and portable seismic pavement analyzer (PSPA). This paper is prepared to present development and application of seismic techniques for in situ nondestructive evaluation of pavement materials.