Date of Graduation

5-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Civil Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Braham, Andrew F.

Committee Member

Coffman, Richard A.

Second Committee Member

Hall, Kevin D.

Abstract

Many times a road will fail and will be in need of both a structural increase and a repair. Full Depth Reclamation (FDR) is a road rehabilitation technique able to offer both. This method also has a lower total cost and significantly lower material usage than traditional overlaying repair methods. FDR is a road repair method which mills up the current road down into the subgrade, and then stabilizes and compacts the milled material. This is also useful for correcting deeper problems in the road structure which are not addressed by traditional methods. In this study, three different suggestions of mix designs for this repair method were observed, and the strengths and weaknesses of each were compared. A consistent problem with the more thorough mix designs was that there is a large amount of equipment required from different fields of engineering: many of the tests required equipment from both a soils and a pavements laboratory. In an effort to streamline testing equipment, the results of a modified Proctor test were compared to the results of densities of samples tested in a gyratory compactor at varying water contents. The Proctor and gyratory compactor both gave similar trends between water content and dry density. The gyratory compactor testing was also much quicker, and the data had a tighter fit line. This is an important step in simplifying FDR mix design in order to make it more widely available. Samples with binder contents of 2%, 3%, and 4% and water contents varying from 2%-6% were created in a slotted gyratory compactor. These samples were tested for density and for compressive strength after Ndesign of 75 Gyrations. It was observed that higher water contents were correlated with higher density, and higher compressive strengths. Higher binder contents had no noticeable bearing on the density of the sample, but did increase the compressive strength of the sample. In the future, the adsorption of coarse aggregate will be observed, and samples will be tested at higher water contents.

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