Laboratory Evaluation of Marginal and Industrial Waste Material in Geocell-Reinforced Pavements under Cyclic Loading

The availability of quality materials for the construction of pavements has been a problem in some regions. This scarcity enforced geosynthetic materials as one of the quests for su1stainability in the pavement industry. This study attempted to stabilize marginal (tunnel muck, reclaimed asphalt pavement material) and industrial waste (zinc slag) materials by employing high density polyethylene geocell to appraise the effectiveness of geosynthetic reinforcement in enhancing the characteristics of pavement materials and mitigating their rutting. The cyclic plate load tests are performed on marginal and industrial waste material with geocellreinforced and unreinforced base layers over black cotton soil as the subgrade. The tests were conducted following the trapezoidal loading pattern with a 0.77-Hz frequency. The geocellreinforced pavement performance was evaluated for resilient deformation, accumulated permanent deformation, rut depth reduction, traffic benefit ratio, and base layer thickness reduction. The mechanistic empirical pavement design guide (MEPDG) permanent deformation performance (PDP) model framework was used to predict the accumulated permanent deformation in unbound granular layers and to differentiate the rutting performance in geocellreinforced and unreinforced sections. This study determined the material constants of the MEPDG PDP model for marginal and industrial waste materials used in the pavement section for quantifying the reduction in base layer thickness.