Impact Test System for Pavement Subgrade Evaluation

摘要

This paper discusses the design of an impact test system for rapid evaluation of pavement subgrade. The system delivers similar amount of energy into the ground. Experiments at several locations indicates that the impact characteristics such as peak acceleration and impact duration of the falling plate is highly correlated to shear wave velocity of soils at the ground surface. This observation is further validated by results of numerical simulation. In addition, it is found that the characteristics of the acceleration process during impaction process contains information of ground profiling such as the existence of underlying layer and the thickness of the surface layer. A sensitivity study is conducted to optimize the impact measurement system design. The system can be used for evaluation of pavement subgrade and for other shallow foundation applications.