Experimental Performance of Polyester-Fiber-Based Soil Geogrids against Reflective Cracks

Abstract

Road pavements may be subjected to deterioration problems caused by excessive traffic loads, thousands of load repetitions, environmental and climatic conditions, freeze-thaw effects, and insufficient design of mixtures. The formation of reflective cracks is the most common structural problem that occurs on a road’s superstructure over time. Special applications requiring expensive geosynthetics, such as glass-fiber-based geogrids (GG) or carbon-fiber-based geogrids, are generally used to solve this problem. Therefore, in this study, the utility of polyester-fiber-based soil geogrid (PG) is investigated as an alternative solution in relation to experimental performance analysis. Three-point bending tests are realized to custom-engineered hot mix asphalt plate specimens, with and without geogrids, under full-capacity static loading, cyclic loading, and dynamic fatigue loading conditions. Although the same bending strength levels are seen for plate specimens, including GG and PG reinforcements with a 100 kN/m tensile strength, PG-containing specimens show a 42% greater performance in the case of cyclic loading. Moreover, PG-reinforced plates have greater elastic behavior than GG plates, up to 49.4% within a dynamic fatigue test at the end of 15,000 cycles. As a result, it is shown that reflective cracks can be more effectively delayed by the use of soil PGs, rather than GGs, in relation to overall performance and service life.