Structural Characteristics of Stabilized Base Materials

Abstract

As a type of traditional materials, stabilized materials or semi-rigid base materials are widely used in all grades of pavement in China. As well as other materials, performance of stabilized base materials are not only related with its composition but also controlled by its structure. Performance of stabilized base composed by same materials is different in practice. According to the distribution of coarse and fine aggregates stabilized base can be divided into four structure types. They are skeleton-dense structure, skeleton-porous structure, suspension-dense structure and uniformity-dense structure. Types of base material have specific physical concepts. It can be made sure by the ratio between residual void of compacted coarse aggregate and the volume of compacted fine aggregate and binder material. It also can be checked by indoor tests. Structure type of stabilized base material is controllable and realizable in mix proportion design. Systemic tests indicate that performance of stabilized material with different structural type is featured and skeleton-dense structure is better than suspension-dense structure in performance of cracking and erosion resistance. The testing results, for three structural types of cement stabilized crushed stone including suspension-dense, skeleton-dense and skeleton-porous structures, for two structural types of lime fly-ash stabilized crushed stone including suspension-dense and skeleton-dense structures, were presented in this paper.