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Reinforcement of Bituminous Wearing Course with Geotextiles on Road 588 in Soderhamn

Geotextiles as reinforcement in bituminous overlays to delay reflective cracking is a method used since long especially in the USA. The method has been used in a lot of different projects, but there are big difficulties in finding out whether the method is cost effective or not. The major problem is to measure the effect of a geotextile built in between two asphalt layers. In this project we have tried to measure the effect in the laboratory by including geotextiles in test bodies 1 x2 m in size. The test bodies were tested in a test bench at Swedish Road and Traffic Research Institute. The test bodies were pulled apart and the tensile strength and elongation at break was measured. The same type of geotextile reinforcements were also constructed on a test site on road 588. The road was yearly inspected and the cracks arisen were monitored. Every year the bearing capacity was measured by a Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD). A few times the roadsurfaces’ evenness was measured by a rolling laser equipment called Primal measurer.