Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Article Title: Engineering Geological Evaluation of Subgrade Soil Along Failed Road Pavement
by Thompson Henry Tolulope Ogunribido, Ayodele Kayode Ogundana, and Emmanuel Sunday Bobade

Abstract:
The study involved the assessment of engineering geological properties of failed highway pavement in Benin City to determine factors responsible for the failures Soil samples collected from 15 failed portions at the depth of 1.5m were subjected to testing because. there was no evidence of engineering geological investigations in this failed portion of the road in literature Soil tests carried out on each of the soil samples includes; liquid limit, plastic limit, linear shrinkage, moisture content, grain size analysis, specific gravity, CBR and UCS. The results showed moisture contents ranged between 10.1% and 25.9 %, specific gravity was between 2.34 � 2.77 with location 15 having the lowest and location 2 having the highest value, liquid limits ranged from 40.1% - 50.4%, the lowest occurred in location 1 and can be considered good for use as sub-grade soil while the highest liquid limit occurred at location 14 and can be considered poor for use as sub-grade soil, plastic limits ranged between 9.0% - 12%, the lowest occurred in location 3 and highest in location 15, the MDD ranged from 1861Kg/m3 to 2020Kg/m3. and OMC ranged from 10.0% to 15.1%., here soil MDD were less than the recommended value of 2165Kg/m3 for Nigeria soils, The CBR ranged from 15% to 32%, the lowest at locations 7 and 10, while the highest occurred at location 6, this showed that the subgrade soils are not good enough as a result of high clay content and poor strength. Conclusively, road pavement failure was due to poor construction as a result of inadequate engineering geological investigation and soil low bearing capacity due to high clay contents. Keywords:

Keywords: Pavement, Soil Samples, Engineering Geological Properties, Shrinkage, Compaction

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