A comparative study involving different geosynthetics requires careful interpretation because the mechanisms through which geosynthetics improve the performance of unpaved roads are complex, as discussed in detail in the Part 1 article (Giroud and Han, 2016). As a result of this complexity, the performance of unpaved roads incorporating geosynthetics depends on multiple factors. Therefore, a simplistic interpretation of field tests consisting in comparing only the overall performance of test sections and using only one criterion, e.g., the total number of vehicle passes, may be misleading. In other words, overall performance can be used to compare a test section with another test section, but overall performance alone is not sufficient to compare the effectiveness of two different geosynthetics in actual unpaved roads. An objective comparison of the contributions of two different geosynthetics to unpaved road improvement can result only from a comprehensive interpretation involving overall performance evaluation as well as detailed instrumentation aimed at evaluating the mechanisms through which the geosynthetic incorporated in the road structure improves the performance. This necessary condition makes it possible to generalize from field tests to actual situations because a meaningful regression analysis can be performed only for data sets that are mechanically related.
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