Evaluation of the Resilient and Permanent Behaviors of Cohesive Soils

Resilient modulus has been used for characterizing the stress-strain behavior of subgrade soils subjected to traffic loadings. With the recent release of the M-E Design Guide, highway agencies are further encouraged to implement the resilient modulus test to improve subgrade design. The subgrade design for the trackbed, however, is primarily relying on the static test results such as and deformation modulus, Ev. Therefore applicability of the resilient modulus for the design of trackbed needs to be evaluated. In this study, physical property tests, unconfined compressive tests and resilient modulus tests were conducted to assess the resilient and permanent strain behavior of 14 cohesive subgrade soils. A predictive model for estimating the resilient modulus is proposed based on the results of unconfined compressive tests and tangent elastic modulus, unconfined compressive strength, failure strain, secant modulus at peak, and yield strain. The predicted resilient moduli using the predictive models compared satisfactorily with measured ones. Although the permanent strain occurs during the resilient modulus test, the permanent behavior of subgrade soils is currently not taken into consideration.