Behaviour of an emulsion treated base (ETB) layer as determined from heavy vehicle simulator (HVS) testing

Bituminous materials and, more specifically, emulsions are often used as an additive to layers during the rehabilitation of road pavements. However, the Mechanistic analysis and economic justification of emulsion stabilization often presents engineers with challenges. This paper reports on the development of a fatigue relationship to be used for the mechanistic analyses of emulsion treated layers using heavy vehicle simulator (HVS) test results. It is shown that the rehabilitated road pavement is capable of carrying relatively high traffic loads under a condition of relatively high surface deflection measurements. The resultant fatigue line is compared to other existing fatigue lines which are shown to be comparatively conservative. The verification of these results in practice could assist engineers in the economic justification of the use of emulsion as an additive for the in-situ recycling of road pavement layers.