ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF GEOSYNTHETICS ON STRENGTH PROPERTIES OF ROAD PAVEMENT LAYERS

A non-woven geotextile sample was used as a common specie of Geosynthetics together with soil materials borrowed from two different pit sources of Kambodia, Bunju in Dar es Salam and Lumecha, Ifakara Morogoro region. Further, experimental tests were done in Central Materials Laboratory of Tanzania (CML) to assess effects of their applications in roads construction technology and viable strength properties that would serve the pavements. The research team has simulated this in two sets of lab tests to identify the difference in strength property of product materials during its construction. One of the set of tests involved only plain soil samples that was termed as control test and another set of tests was termed as experimental test as it conformed to the virgin soil samples impregnated with non-woven geotextile specimen prepared in a round form. The research objective is to assess the effects of geosynthetic on strength properties of road pavement layers, specifically the soil samples and geotextile specimens were collected for conduction of lab tests in order to characterize soil properties and evaluate geosynthetics properties. Since roads are subjected to distresses of traffic loading, it has been observed that the sets of experimental tests have shown great performance compared to the sets of control tests. However the strength property values were increasing as the number of non-woven geotextile specimens increased in the sampled sets, also other related indicative parameters of the strength of pavement such as bearing capacity, ultimate stresses, unconfined strained area, strains, and compressibility were part of recorded results with remarkable improved property values. These Geo-findings have viable implications in roads construction and that Geosynthetics are significantly important in both unpaved and paved roads as well as other related infrastructures. Furthermore, our country’s industrialization drive and building the middle income economy will be supported by sound construction of reliable highways.