Improvement of Field Installation Method for Asphalt Concrete Pavement Strain Gauge

The KHC Test Road project was initiated on 1991 to develop Korean Pavement Design Guide. It was constructed along the Joongbu Inland Expressway line between Yeoju and Gamgok. It is two-lane wide expressway containing fifteen asphalt and twenty-five Portland cement concrete test pavement sections. Various sensors were installed in the Test Road to evaluate the behavior of test pavement sections under the influence of traffic load and environmental change. The most important issues in the sensor installation are the accurate location and long-term survivability. They are directly influenced by the sensor installation methodology. The methodology for asphalt strain gages is mainly discussed in this paper because it is the second important sensors in the KHC Test Road project. In order to find the best methodology, we evaluated existing methodology from prior experience and several conducted test installations. We have tried mound, block out, and trench cuts since 2000. Among three methods, block out was the most effective one in terms of accurate location, long-term survivability, and material homogeneity. However, this method cannot be applied to the wearing coarse so that the mound method was used as an alternative. The block out method was applied to base and intermediate layers while the mound method was used to the wearing coarse. Three hundred seventy-four asphalt strain gauges were installed on asphalt pavement sections from September 3rd to November 18th in 2002. According to the sensor measurement evaluation, 6.3% of sensor demonstrated over ranged readings for mound method installation and 2.5% did for block out method installation. We lost only two sensors during the installation. It is 99.5% survival and it is excellent survival rate according to other experience.