Numerical Studies on Rutting Criteria of Geocell Reinforced Flexible Pavement

Roadways play an inevitable role in providing maximum service to one and all. Mostly, flexible pavements are adopted for roadways around the globe. India, being a place of geographical diversity, consists of large varieties of soils with different strength characteristics. Areas with soil having poor bearing capacity poses a serious problem in pavement construction. Constant increase in traffic frequency and axle loads will lead to a large deformation of weak subgrade which will finally result in the failure of the paved or unpaved surface. Geosynthetics, such as geotextiles, geogrids, geo-composites, have been increasingly used as construction materials in civil engineering projects. Recently, geocell application in pavement layers have been showing much improved performance. In this study, numerical analysis using Plaxis 3D software is carried out to evaluate the performance of areca geocell reinforced flexible pavement on rutting characteristics. It was found that pavement reinforced with areca geocell has reduced rutting when compared to other pavement section.