Soil Specific Challenges for Stabilization and Road Construction

Traditional means of road construction, such as transport and replacement of native earth material with well-graded gravel for sub-base materials, is excessively expensive and laborious. More often roads are being built on existing earth material to reduce construction costs. To enable construction, the native earth material is first stabilized to improve the engineering properties of the soil, such as increased strength and reduced propensity to shrink/swell by moisture fluctuations. If a thorough geotechnical investigation is not performed prior to construction, the risk of damage to the road caused by soil specific challenges and secondary mineral formations is tremendous. The annual cost of repairing roads affected by these challenging soils is reported in the millions of dollars per road. This presentation will discuss many of the challenges caused by problem soils that plague road engineers when building new or rehabilitating roads.