Road Construction on Soft Soils in Indonesia: A Study on Soil- Pavement Interaction

Abstract

The soft soils area in Indonesia covers about 10 million hectares or 10 % of the total land area. Because of the low bearing capacity and high compressibility of the soft soils, many roads in this area lose their serviceability before the end of their original design life. One of the causes is that due to the lack of thorough understanding of the behaviour of the soil
and its influence on pavement performance, no optimum maintenance measures are carried out. This paper presents a case study of a road on a soft marine clay subsoil in Cilincing, North Jakarta, Indonesia. The road was built in 1980 and since that date many severe structural damages in the pavement occurred due to uneven settlement of the subsoil. To investigate the effects of uneven settlements on pavement response, the finite element method was utilized on a large scale in this study. From an extensive series of analyses, which included uneven settlements as well as traffic loadings, it can be concluded that an integrated soil/pavement analysis provides a much better understanding of the interaction mechanism between pavement and subsoil.