Substructure Evaluation of Pavement due to Excavation and Recompaction Sequences for Pipe Installation

Pipe installation following excavation of pavement and underlying-soils induces settlements, cracks and bad roughness near utility cut. This study is to use PMT and LDWT in order to evaluate stiffness and/or degree of compaction of sublayers and backfill in utility cut section because no specially designed efforts for evaluating stiffness condition of the substructures below new pavement after pipe installation are offered at this time. From test results of PMT, comparable stiffness and/or degree of compaction in recompaction process is not obtained comparing to that of the existing sublayers before excavation. Thickness of the new surface layer after pipe installation must be designed thicker than that of the existing surface layer. It is verified that LDWT comparing to PMT is effective only to get stiffness and/or degree of compaction within limited depth from surface of materials, but it is not useful to evaluate stiffness of substructures in full depth in case of utility cut.