Experimental characterization of unbound granular materials subjected to high harmonic loads

Abstract

Road pavement structures are generally composed of unsaturated granular materials. The influence of the fine content is significant as well as unsaturated state on the resilient strain behaviour of granular materials for pavements. In this paper, based on the soil water retention curves and repeated load triaxial tests for a granular material with three fine contents, the simple exponential function relationship between resilient strain behaviours and s/s* values (suction) could be observed, which can reduce the number of tests required to determine the unsaturated resilient strain behaviours of this kind of granular material.