Instalação de geossintéticos em pavimentos flexíveis com CBUQ: danos de instalação

Abstract

An essential means for locomotion of people and cargoes throughout the territory, the road transport gains an important role in the social and economic field. However, the low investment in infrastructure causes it to develop pathologies that need to be inspected, as well as the mechanisms that originated them, so the proper restoration or prevention alternatives can be chosen. Aiming to extend the service life of the pavement and to provide for users efficient trafficability conditions that meet comfort, economy and safety requirements, technologies have been developed and the use of reinforcement in road construction can be highlighted. Geosynthetics has increasingly been used in pavements due to reduction of time execution, costs and even environmental impacts. Nevertheless, if improperly handled or subjected to external agents, polymeric materials may exhibit unsatisfactory performance during its service life. Accordingly, this research was developed in an urban area of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, in order to investigate the thermal and mechanical damages in geosynthetics in a pavement construction and compare the results obtained with the available literature data, since most of the studies are performed in laboratories. Therefore, samples with different types of geosynthetics were exposed to high temperature of the CBUQ and to compaction activity and then exhumed and tested by means of uniaxial tensile tests. Thereby, tensile strength, strain, coefficient of variation, secant tensile modulus and reduction factor were evaluated and compared before and after the damage. The results showed that subjecting geosynthetics to damages as those occurring in a pavement construction, in general, a decrease in tensile strength and strain is observed. Moreover, some reduction factors expressed higher values than those available in the literature.