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Pavements 2025

Pavement Design, Evaluation, Preservation, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation

POSTER RECEPTION (View list of posters here)

Performance of Unpaved Roads Stabilized with Recycled and Virgin Plastic Composite Geosynthetics

Tuesday, June 10, 2025
4:45 PM – 6:00 PM MT
Abstract: Incorporating recycled plastics into road construction practices can offer significant sustainability benefits, including energy conservation, cost reduction, and beneficial utilization of solid wastes. This paper discusses recent findings from performance monitoring of unpaved test roads stabilized with a composite geosynthetic, consisting of a geogrid made from recycled plastic bonded to a nonwoven geotextile, compared to a similar one made from virgin plastic. Three full-scale test roads were constructed in Buchanan County, Iowa as unpaved road test sections: one stabilized with a newly developed composite geosynthetic made from recycled plastic, one with the same composite geosynthetic made from virgin plastic, and a control section with no geosynthetic stabilization. They were installed with soil moisture and temperature sensors. After construction, the test sections were subjected to real traffic loads that included passages of loaded trucks and implements of husbandry (i.e., farm equipment). The results show that both types of composite geosynthetics, made from recycled and virgin plastics, effectively reduced soil moisture contents to improve the bearing capacities of these unpaved roads and furthermore significantly reduced rutting and other damage caused by traffic and weathering. These findings suggest that the composite geosynthetic made from recycled plastic offers comparable performance benefits to that of virgin plastic for enhancing unpaved road performance, pending further validation through continuous monitoring and long-term evaluation.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees can expect to learn the following from this session:
  • Innovative sustainable methods and recycling technologies for pavement materials
  • Construction quality control, quality assurance, and accelerated pavement testing.
  • Applications of machine learning and AI in pavements to improve performance and predict outcomes.