PURPOSES : The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of road stone block pavements using APT (Accelerated Pavement Testing), which can evaluate the short-term pavement performance of a pavement structure for a given traffic load.
METHODS : The performance of stone block, concrete block, and asphalt (modified SMA) pavements were evaluated according to the cumulative equivalent load by using APT. The FWD (Falling Weight Deflectometer) test was used to analyze the deflection per unit load. In addition, the plastic settlement was analyzed by transverse profile measurement.
RESULTS: The results of the APT of about 197,000 ESALs (Equivalent Single Axle Loads) show that there were no damages in the stone block, concrete block, and asphalt pavement, such as breakage of stone or concrete block, cracking of asphalt, deflection, and plastic settlement of the wheel-pass section. It was analyzed that the bearing capacity of each pavement section did not decrease sharply with increase in cumulative ESAL. The results of plastic settlement analysis show that in the case of asphalt pavement, the plastic settlement steadily progressed from the beginning of the APT, and a settlement of about 4.76 mm occurred. In the case of concrete block and stone block pavements, no significant change occurred after the initial stabilization step, and plastic settlement of about 1.01 mm and 0.17 mm occurred for the concrete block and stone block pavements, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS : As a result of the analysis of the bearing capacity and plastic settlement after the APT, the performance of stone pavement was found to be similar to that of asphalt pavement and concrete block pavement. Therefore, it is concluded that stone pavements are applicable for the road pavement system.