EVALUATION OF GRANULAR MATERIAL QUALITY ACCORDING TO CURRENT SPECIFICATIONS FOR GRANULAR BASES

Abstract

Establishing the quality methods and specifications for the granular material of the granular base is a topic of interest and concern to societies. However, it is common to find in many regions that quality specifications are obsolete, do not present the current level of knowledge about the characterization of granular material and reject the use of some materials for not meeting their requirements. The objective of this investigation is to evaluate consistency and compliance of different granular material properties with respect to current standards of granular base of pavement, by means of the standard deviation and Percent within Limits (PWL) respectively. The quality requirements analyzed are the percentage of elongated and slab particles, sand equivalent value, liquid limit, plasticity index, resistance to abrasion and California Bearing Ratio (CBR) index. The results showed that the granular materials do not satisfactorily meet the requirements of the standards as well as the properties of the materials are inconsistent. This suggests that the current requirements for bases probably need to be restructured to obtain a higher compliance for materials that present geotechnical conditions similar to those evaluated in this research, under scientific support and without compromising the stability and functionality of the base.