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Investigation of In-Situ Strength of Various Construction/Widening Methods Utilized on Local Roads

Date and Time: Tuesday, July 25: 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Location: Grand Ballroom B

 

Lead Presenter: Shad Sargand

Russ Professor and Vice Director of Business Development, Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment at Ohio University

Speaker Biography

Professor Sargand earned his PhD in civil engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1981. Since then he has been on the faculty of the civil engineering department of Ohio University’s Russ College of Engineering and Technology, and was named Russ Professor in 1990. He has authored over 340 journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports. Since its inception in 1995, he has been the lead researcher of the Ohio Strategic Highway Research Program National Test Road on US Route 23 in Delaware County, Ohio, which has contributed enormous amounts of valuable data for the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) database. He also led other test road efforts including US Route 30 in Wooster, Ohio, three test pavements in New York (I490 in Rochester, I86 in Olean, and I90 in Syracuse), and the Southern Ohio Low Volume Experimental Road (SOLVER) on US Route 50 in Vinton County, Ohio. He is the Vice Director for Business Development of the Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment (ORITE) at Ohio University, having served as Associate Director for three decades since its establishment. Dr. Sargand also established the ORITE Advanced Asphalt Laboratory and Accelerated Pavement Load Facility in Lancaster, Ohio.
Besides rigid and flexible pavement instrumentation and modeling, his areas of research interest and expertise include geotechnical engineering, drainage structures, thermoplastic pipes, steel and concrete culverts, asphalt materials, nondestructive infrastructure test methods, quality assurance/quality control, and finite element modeling. He also supervised a major study of deeply buried thermoplastic pipes. which has continued for two decades. He developed a method for inspecting and evaluating the condition of pipes and culverts in the field for the Ohio Department of Transportation. He also contributed laboratory test results and finite element modeling of thermoplastic pipes with recycled content for NCHRP Project 04-39, and is investigating the performance of concrete pipe reinforced with synthetic fibers.
Professor Sargand organized three international conferences on perpetual pavement since 2006, and the National Hydraulic Engineering Conference in Columbus, Ohio in August 2018. He has received several nationally recognized awards and honors for his research, including the D.R. Harting Award of the Society of Experimental Mechanics in 1992 and 1999 and Certificates of Achievement for the SHRP Test Road from Ohio Governor George Voinovich in 1995 and the Federal Highway Administration in 1998. He was awarded the William W. “Bill” Baker Award from Flexible Pavements of Ohio in March 2011 for his “commitment to quality and overall impact on the Ohio asphalt paving industry.”
Professor Sargand’s studies have often delivered real value to industry and government sponsors. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and other agencies have incorporated many of Professor Sargand’s recommendations in their specifications and practices.

Co-Authors 

Roger L. Green, Research Engineer, Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment at Ohio University; Andrew Russ, Research Engineer / Scientist, Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment at Ohio University

Presentation Description/Paper Summary

The project goal was to develop and verify a low-cost, repeatable, non-destructive methodology to characterize the load carrying capacity of materials used in road widening and construction when established values are not available, and establish a range of structural coefficients and moduli for these materials. A total of 99 test sites were selected from 68 projects in 8 counties across Ohio, grouped into 5 clusters. These sites included 19 different widening treatments.
Each site was visited, tests conducted, and specimens gathered using the following techniques: FWD, PSPA, LWD, DCP, and coring. The data and specimens collected were used to measure layer thicknesses, moduli, effective structural numbers, and layer coefficients applicable to each treatment. At least 7 analysis methods were used to obtain the numbers from the data collected.
The results were plotted in box plot and cumulative frequency format for each material and each analysis method. For each material, there is a wide variability of values both within a section and between different sections. There are many sources for this variability, however a range of numbers for moduli and layer coefficients can be identified for most treatments which can be utilized by local engineering personnel to design future projects.
The procedure based on the Section 2.3.5 of the 1993 AASHTO pavement design guide using FWD data provided the best estimate of published layer coefficients. However, using these values in other areas cannot be guaranteed accurate; truly accurate layer coefficients come from careful monitoring of test sections under controlled loads.

Presentation File

Poster